Two suicide bombers killed 120 people and wounded more than 200 in attacks near a Shiite holy shrine and a police recruiting centre on Thursday, the bloodiest day in Iraq for four months. Iraq's prime minister denounced the violence as an attempt to derail the political. But Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq, blamed Sunni Arab groups that fared poorly in the elections for inciting the violence. SCIRI warned that Shiite patience was wearing thin and accused the U.S.-led coalition forces of restraining the Iraqi army and its police and security forces.The suicide bombers struck in Kerbala, one of Shiite Islam's holiest cities, and Ramadi, a Sunni Arab stronghold in western Anbar province and a hotbed of the insurgency. 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 Shiite Islam. Television pictures showed pools of blood in the street, which was littered with debris. 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.
About an hour after the Kerbala 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 U.S. military said the blast ripped through a line of some 1,000 men waiting to be security screened at a glass and ceramics works that was used as a temporary recruiting centre. After the debris and body parts had been cleared away, hundreds of Iraqis returned to the queue, the military said.
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 Shiites. "This is a war against Shiites," said Rida Jawad al-Takia, a senior SCIRI member. "Apparently to the terrorists, no Shiite child or woman should live," he told Reuters. "We are really worried. It seems they want a civil war."
In a separate statement, SCIRI said that U.S.-led coalition forces were preventing Iraq's army and police from stopping insurgents, an apparent reference to increased American oversight of Shiite-dominated security forces following widespread charges of abuse - especially of Sunni Arab detainees. "The multinational forces, and the political entities that declared their support for terrorism, bear the responsibility for the bloodshed that happened in the recent few days. They should know that the patience of our people will not last for a long time," it said.
"It's an odious crime which shows the savagery and sectarianism of these criminals," said Jawad al-Maliki, a top leader from Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Daawa party, speaking of the attack in Kerbala. "They are trying to change the results through terror," he said in a veiled reference to complaints by Sunni-based parties of ballot-rigging in the poll.
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.
A senior official in the Iraqi Accordance Movement, the main minority Sunni coalition, denounced the violence and called for solidarity among Iraqis to defeat it, but he blamed the government for allowing it to happen. "This government has not only failed to end violence, but it has become an accomplice in the cycle of violence by adopting sectarian policies and by weakening the state and strengthening militia groups," Izzat al-Shahbandar said.