http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/6432524/Baghdad-blasts-132-people-killed-in-worst-attack-in-two-years.htmlraq suffered its deadliest terrorist attack in more than two years when two car bombs killed at least 132 people in the centre of Baghdad.
By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent
Published: 6:32PM GMT 25 Oct 2009
Iraqis gather at the site of the massive bomb attack at the Ministry of Justice in Baghdad Photo: AP
Another 500 were wounded when the bombs targeting government buildings exploded in quick succession.
The attacks appeared to represent a statement of intent by Iraq’s increasingly emboldened insurgent groups after recent predictions of a new wave of violence with the intention of disrupting elections planned for January.
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Amid much acrimony, Iraqi MPs missed a deadline last week to pass an election law required to hold the poll, raising the prospect of a damaging delay that contravenes the constitution.
The decision brought with it warnings of a backlash by insurgents seeking to exploit the political vacuum and damage the reputation of Nouri al-Maliki, the pro-American prime minister. In a phone call to Mr Maliki on Sunday, President Barack Obama described the bombings as “outrageous” and said they were an attempt to derail progress in Iraq.
Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the Iraqi government was quick to blame the attacks on al-Qaeda or remnants of Saddam Hussein’s party.
“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 shattered from the force of the blast.
For many Iraqis, the attacks were a chilling reminder of their country as it once was - and perhaps a harbinger of things to come if the elections are not held on time.
A pall of smoke hung above the city as flames enveloped whole buildings. On the streets cars that had been tossed in the air by the power of the explosion lay piled on top each other in pyramids of twisted metal.
Stagnant water disgorged onto the streets by sewage pipes ripped open by the blast washed over charred and mangled corpses.
So intense was the heat generated by the bombs, which targeted the justice ministry and a nearby provincial government building, that firemen said that many of the dead were too hot to touch.
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 bombings on the foreign and finance ministries in August.
But even the calm has been deceptive. Lawlessness remains pervasive across the country, a fact exemplified by one incident in the aftermath of Sunday’s bombings.
As police sought to secure the perimeter of the scene, they heard a frantic banging from the boot of a damaged car with two corpses in the passenger seats.
Inside, officers discovered a man who had been bundled into the boot of the car after being seized from the streets earlier that day. Such kidnappings remain common in Iraq.
The deadliest toll in a terrorist strike in Iraq since the invasion was in August 2007, when more than 400 people were slaughtered by four co-ordinated suicide truck bombs targeting the Yazidi religious sect in Kurdish northern Iraq.
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