BAGHDAD: Bombs killed more than 50 people in Iraq on Thursday in the worst violence since US combat troops withdrew from urban areas last week. The most lethal attack was in the northern city of Tal Afar, where women sat in the street amid torn and bloodied bodies in the aftermath of suicide bombings, wailing and beating their chests in grief. Several men crouched and wept into their hands. Others rushed the wounded to ambulances; some used a bed sheet as a makeshift stretcher.
In a statement on his website, President Jalal Talabani condemned the attacks and said the “forces of evil and terrorism” were trying in vain to demoralize Iraqi security forces and the civilian population.
Some 130,000 US troops remain in Iraq, but they have a much lower profile and are preparing for a complete pullout by the end of 2011. Iraqi attitudes are mixed, with some rejoicing over the absence of American troops in their streets and a new sense of sovereignty, and others worried that extremists will now have more freedom to operate.
“Our security forces are still weak, with poor intelligence,” said Saeed Rahim, a government employee in Baghdad. “Deploying more unqualified troops into the streets does not necessarily lead to better results.”
The day’s violence began at 6:30 a.m., when a suicide bomber in a police uniform and carrying a radio and a pistol knocked on the door of an investigator in the anti-terrorism police force in Tal Afar. When the officer opened the door, the bomber detonated his explosive belt, killing the officer, his wife and son, said Maj. Gen. Khalid Al-Hamadani, police chief of the northern Nineveh province. As people gathered in the aftermath, another suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt, Al-Hamadani said. The coordinated attack killed a total of 38 people and injured 66. Army Brig. Abdul-Rahman Abu Raghef said the first suicide bomber was a local resident who had been jailed for one year on suspicion of terrorism, but was released in an amnesty in June.
A day earlier, car bombs in two Shiite villages near Mosul, another northern Iraqi city, killed 16 civilians and injured more than two dozen.
Insurgents also struck Baghdad on Thursday morning, detonating roadside bombs that killed 13 people and injured dozens. Eight of them died and 30 were injured in coordinated blasts near an outdoor market in the Shiite district of Sadr City, said Maj. Gen. Qassim Al-Mousawi, spokesman for the city’s operations command center.
Hassan Abdullah, a vegetable salesman, said he heard the first blast and went to see what was happening when a second bomb hidden in trash about 100 yards away exploded.
