IRAQ: Two suicide bombers killed 120 people and wounded more than 200 in attacks near a Shia holy shrine and a police recruiting centre yesterday, the bloodiest day in Iraq for four months.
Seven US soldiers were killed in two roadside bomb attacks, three bombs exploded in Baghdad and insurgents sabotaged an oil pipeline near the northern city of Kirkuk, causing a huge fire.
Coming a day after 58 people died in a wave of bombings and shootings, the latest bloodshed ratcheted up tension between Iraq's minority Sunni Arabs and majority Shia Muslims.
The suicide bombers struck in Kerbala, one of Shia Islam's holiest cities, and Ramadi, a Sunni Arab stronghold in western Anbar province and a hotbed of the insurgency.
"This is a war against Shias," said Rida Jawad al-Takia, a senior member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the country's leading Shia parties.
"Apparently to the terrorists, no Shia child or woman should live," he said. "We are really worried. It seems they want a civil war."
In total, violence has killed more than 240 people and wounded more than 280 in the five days since the new year started, a death toll comparable with some of the nation's bloodiest weeks since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
Yesterday's US death toll was the highest for a single day since last month's parliamentary elections, which have yet to produce a government. Final results from the vote are expected soon, but it could be months before a new parliament is formed.
President Jalal Talabani blamed the attacks on "groups of dark terror" and said they would fail to stop Iraqis forming a national unity government capable of meeting the demands of the country's rival sects and ethnic groups.
The Kerbala bomber detonated an explosive belt laced with ball bearings and a grenade, killing 50 and wounding 138 at a market within sight of the golden dome of the Imam Hussein shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.
Television pictures showed pools of blood in the street. Passers-by loaded the wounded into the backs of cars and vans, and one black-clad woman stood crying while clutching her dead or wounded baby to her chest.
On Wednesday, a car bomb wounded three people in the first attack of its kind in Kerbala since December 2004. In March 2004 co-ordinated suicide bombings during an annual religious festival in the city killed more than 90 people.
About an hour after the blast, another bomber blew himself up near police recruits in the western city of Ramadi, killing 70 people and wounding 65, hospital sources said.
The US military said the blast ripped through a line of some 1,000 men awaiting security clearance at a temporary recruiting centre. After the debris and body parts had been cleared away, hundreds of Iraqis returned to the queue, the military said.
Guerrillas have often attacked Iraqi police and army recruits, whom the Americans hope will eventually replace them in the fight against the largely Sunni Arab insurgency, allowing the US to withdraw. Many young Iraqi men are drawn to work in the security forces by the promise of relatively high pay.
The deaths of the seven US soldiers took the number of US military fatalities since the March 2003 invasion to 2,189. Five were killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad and two were killed by a similar device near Najaf.
Other devices exploded in Baghdad, but with less impact. Three car bombs, two of them suicide attacks, rocked the capital in quick succession, suggesting a level of co-ordination that may be a response by Sunni insurgents to the largely peaceful parliamentary elections. The bombs killed two people.
The Kerbala and Ramadi bombings were the bloodiest attacks in Iraq since September 14th when a suicide bomber killed 114 people in a Shia district of Baghdad. Some 150 were killed that day.