Insurgents launched yet another deadly blitz across Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 40 people in an attack on a business school and setting off a minibus bomb near the Iranian embassy. A suicide bomber triggered his explosive vest packed with ball bearings outside the School of Economy and Administration in east Baghdad, the blast ripping through a crowd of young men and women.Terrified parents converged on the scene searching for their loved ones, some collapsing in horror at the sight of blood and human flesh splattered across the entrance of the building. “They sold us out!” one man cried out, reflecting a growing sentiment that an 11-day-old US and Iraqi security plan has failed to protect the city from those determined to foment sectarian war.
A security official said at least 40 people were killed, and medics at the Imam Ali hospital said they were battling to save more than 30 critically wounded people, many of them female students. An emotional minister of higher education, Abed Dhiab al-Ujaili, said most of the dead were students who had flocked to the school for a day of exams, and that five security guards had given their lives to protect them. “What can you do?” he asked, his voice trembling. “Even the security can’t do everything. It’s very difficult to search everyone.”
The school is an off-campus annex of Mustansiriyah University, which was targeted by extremists on January 16, when a twin bomb attack killed at least 70 people and wounded around 140.
In another attack, a minibus exploded across the street from the Iranian embassy. Iranian officials said they had not been targeted. The blast came during the morning rush hour when the road was packed with people heading for work in nearby Iraqi ministries. The embassy was not damaged, but amid the wreckage could be seen at least four unexploded artillery shells. Had they also detonated, the devastation would have been widespread. “The police told us that it was a Kia minibus, and that two people were killed. It was close to the embassy, but we weren’t the target,” Iranian diplomat Khalil Saadati told AFP.
An Iraqi defence ministry official confirmed that two civilians died in the blast and eight more were wounded. The blast ripped the bus apart, leaving only its shattered engine block amid scorch marks and a spray of deadly shrapnel. US Black Hawk choppers clattered overhead as a cloud of dust drifted over the embassy.
Later, a car bomb wounded five shoppers in the busy Karrada district, officials said. Gunmen stormed an Iraqi police checkpoint near Baghdad airport on Saturday, killing eight policemen. On Sunday, rockets and mortar bombs crashed into a market in an area in southern Baghdad and there were conflicting reports about casualties, police said. One police source said 10 people were killed in the attack in the Abu Dsher area of Doura neighbourhood. Two other police sources said no more than three people had been wounded. Another car bomb exploded along a commercial street in central Baghdad, in the Karrada district, sending a plume of black smoke into the air. One police source said four people were wounded while another said there were no casualties.
The death toll from a bomb attack on a Sunni mosque in western Iraq has risen to 56 with 103 wounded, a doctor said on Sunday as Iraq’s prime minister blamed Al-Qaeda for the carnage. “The final toll of the car bomb which targeted the mosque is 56 killed and 103 wounded,” said Dr Mukhies Abdul Hamid, medical supervisor for the Fallujah area which includes the town of Habbaniyah where Saturday’s attack took place. Baghdad motorists were banned on Sunday from parking on any of the war-torn Iraqi capital’s main streets in order to prevent car bombs and free up the movement of military forces.