NYT: 57 Iraqis Killed by 5 Bombings in Baghdad

57 Iraqis Killed by 5 Bombings in Baghdad

By PAUL von ZIELBAUER | Published: August 13, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 13 — As American forces conducted a new security sweep in western Baghdad on Sunday, five apparently coordinated bombings in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in the city’s south side killed at least 57 people and wounded 148, an Iraqi government official said.

The death toll could rise, the official said, as emergency workers searched for victims in the rubble of an apartment building that collapsed as a result of the bombings.

The attacks, which killed civilians in a largely residential neighborhood, were the deadliest in Baghdad since the American military dispatched new forces to the capital more than a week ago to quell a surge in killings and kidnappings by sectarian militias and criminal gangs.

Also Sunday, American and Iraqi soldiers searching for kidnapping victims raided Iraq’s Health Ministry early in the morning and arrested five bodyguards, military and government officials said.

Southwest of the capital, security forces arrested 16 men who were suspected of planning to kidnap or kill members of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s family, according to a statement from Mr. Maliki’s office.

The five bombings in the Zafaraniya district of southern Baghdad occurred in two waves about an hour apart Sunday evening, an Interior Ministry official said.

At 7:30 p.m. local time, the first of three successive blasts rocked an apartment building, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Shortly thereafter, in a market 60 yards away, a car bomb detonated, killing people involved in rescuing victims of the first blast, the official said. The third explosion, minutes later, occurred on a road near the building as a police patrol sped toward the scene, the official said.

Then, at 8:30 p.m., about 300 yards from the scene of the first three explosions, a bomb rigged to a motorcycle blew up after neighbors confronted its driver, who was trying to park on the street, the Interior Ministry official said. Two minutes later, the official added, a fifth bomb exploded near the wreckage left by the motorcycle bomb, killing bystanders.

The new American-led security operation here is intended “to reduce the level of murders, kidnappings, assassinations, terrorism and sectarian violence in northwest Baghdad and to reinforce the Iraqi government’s control in Iraq’s capital city,’’ according to a statement released by the United States military Sunday evening.

The raid on the Health Ministry, launched at 2:30 a.m. following a tip from a local resident, did not turn up any kidnapping victims but drew a vehement reaction from the health minister, Dr. Ali al-Shimari, a Shiite who is closely aligned with the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr and the powerful Shiite militia he controls, the Mahdi Army.

“They broke into all the floors, especially the ninth floor, stole some money, which was the salaries of the security workers, and they kidnapped five of our staff,” Dr. Shimari, visibly annoyed, told reporters at his office Sunday afternoon. “This is a provocation,” he went on. “No day passes by without raids by the Americans against our health institutions.”

A statement from the American military Sunday evening said coalition forces received a tip at 12:44 a.m. Sunday that 15 men wearing Iraqi Army uniforms had kidnapped six people from a large medical complex in central Baghdad and taken them to the Health Ministry.

American military officials did not respond to questions about whether soldiers took any money from Dr. Shimari’s office, but they said the raid was part of the new American effort to stabilize Baghdad’s precarious security situation.

“The Iraqi government has sworn to take every citizen’s tip seriously and act upon them,” said the military spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, in an e-mailed statement. “The coalition has likewise sworn to assist them in these efforts to build a secure environment. It is for the benefit of the Iraqi people that these forces conducted the search and detained the suspects.”

Dr. Shimari has gained the reputation as something of a Shiite firebrand. In June, he faced awkward questions after a Sunni Arab health official from a neighboring province disappeared after a meeting in Dr. Shimari’s Health Ministry office. Some Sunni Arab political leaders charged that that official, Dr. Ali al-Mahdawi, who is a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was kidnapped by members of a Shiite militia.

Dr. Shimari has denied any knowledge of the disappearance of Dr. Mahdawi, whose fate remains unknown.

The men suspected of plotting to kill or kidnap Prime Minister Maliki’s family members were arrested in Hindiya, about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad, the statement from Mr. Maliki’s office said. The men, whom the statement described as “criminals,” confessed to killings, abductions and carrying out an attack on a police station in Mahmudiya that killed six officers, the statement said. One suspect in the group also confessed to detonating 12 car bombs in Baghdad, it said.

The government did not identify the 16 men or clarify which killings and kidnappings the men had confessed to.

In the northern city of Mosul, Duraid Kashmula, the governor of Ninawa Province, barely escaped assassination after gunmen fired at his convoy with machine guns, an official in the governor’s office said. A member of the governor’s security detail was wounded in the attack.

Also Sunday, American military officials said that soldiers from the 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, had arrested a man on Thursday who was involved in a marketplace bombing in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, on July 17 that killed 40 people and wounded 70 others.

Qais Mizher, Ali Adeeb and Khalid W. Hassan contributed reporting for this article from Baghdad.