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At least 132 people were killed and hundreds injured when insurgents
intent on disrupting forthcoming elections in Iraq mounted Baghdad's
deadliest terror attack in over two years. By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent
Published: 2:02PM GMT 25 Oct 2009 Two car bombs targeting the country's justice ministry and the nearby
headquarters of the Baghdad provincial administration exploded in quick
succession, leaving in their wake a scene a familiar scene of devastation.
Police said at least 132 people were killed and over 500 more were
wounded in the attacks, the bloodiest in the capital city since April 2007. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, although the Iraqi
government was quick to blame the attacks on either al-Qaeda or remnants
of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime. "The initial analysis shows it bears the fingerprints of al-Qaeda and
the Ba'athists," said Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman, who was
showered in glass after windows in a hotel he was visiting were
shattered by the force of the blast. The attacks came after warnings that insurgent groups could step up
their campaign of terror against Iraq's US-backed government ahead of a
crucial parliamentary election that is supposed to be held on Jan 16
next year. As a harbinger of what could follow in the coming months, Sunday's
attacks were a chilling statement of intent. Cars tossed into the air by the power of the explosions lay piled on top
of each other in ungainly piles of twisted wreckage. Burst pipes from
the shattered facades of government buildings filled the streets with
stagnant water that washed over charred and mangled corpses. So intense was the heat generated by the bombs that firemen said that
many of the dead were too hot to touch. Many Iraqis had hoped that such scenes of carnage were in the past. But although the number of major attacks both in the capital city and
elsewhere in the country dropped significantly since the US military
surge of 2007, this was the second attack of such magnitude in Baghdad
in the last three months. Nearly 100 people were killed in attacks on the foreign and finance
ministries in August.
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