Iraqis blame allies for bombings

BAGHDAD — Outraged by their country’s collapse into chaos, some Iraqis are turning to a disturbing explanation for Wednesday morning’s suicide bombings in Basra — that they must have been planned by British occupation forces or other U.S. allies.

“It’s the Americans or the [Israeli intelligence service] Mossad,” said Abdul Rahman Abbas, 37, a student of mechanical engineering. “An Iraqi or a Muslim wouldn’t do this. Whoever is doing this, he hates this country.”

The coordinated blasts in the predominantly Shi’ite city killed 73 persons — five of whom died of injuries overnight — and left many more critically injured. Nineteen of the dead were schoolchildren who were burned to death in two school buses.

Iraqi authorities blamed the terrorist group al Qaeda for the bombings. But as Iraqis struggled to explain the horror, many pointed their fingers at the forces of the U.S.-led coalition.

“I can only explain it psychologically,” said Saad Jawad, a political science professor at Baghdad University.

“People are accusing the coalition forces of carrying out these attacks because deep in their hearts, they blame them for all of the insecurity, the bloodshed, all of the troubles that they have had over the past year.”

Hundreds of supporters of extremist Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr flooded the streets of Basra yesterday, waving banners that blamed the bombings on British forces and “the criminal Tony Blair,” Britain’s prime minister.

Speaking to the crowd, a Basra spokesman for Sheik al-Sadr declared that British troops had carried out the attack.

Reporters for Arabic television station Al Jazeera, which broadcast the speech, pointed out that Sheik al-Sadr’s spokesman did not offer any evidence for his claim. But many viewers, eager to believe the claim, supplied their own.

“Every day, the British patrol comes through that area,” said Ehab Sabbagh, 34, a Shi’ite originally from Basra. “The bombing happened right after they went through. What are we supposed to think?”

Mr. Sabbagh, who lives in Baghdad, spent all day Wednesday on the telephone trying to reach his parents and siblings in Basra after he heard about the bombings.

“There are eyewitnesses who saw missiles coming from a helicopter,” said Mr. Sabbagh, a former Iraqi army pilot who lost his job after the war. “It’s not a secret — but who dares to say it?”

Mr. Sabbagh was referring to a police academy guard who was interviewed on several Arabic-language television stations on Wednesday. The same stations also interviewed an American general who rejected the claim.

But the guard’s story spread across Baghdad, fed by rumors and inflammatory statements. “People tended to believe him, even though they don’t have any proof of what he said,” said Mr. Jawad.

A few residents accepted the coalition’s theory that the bombs were the work of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, whose hallmark is simultaneous suicide attacks. But others rejected it out of hand.

“I believe that al Qaeda is a fantasy — it doesn’t exist,” said Sunni storekeeper Omar Labib, 35, leaning over to tickle the dimpled 2-year-old son of a customer. “I believe that this is made by the Israelis, so that they would make the people hate the resistance, or what is called ’the resistance.’”

It was a popular theory in Baghdad, where some neighborhoods still display pictures of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas who was assassinated by the Israeli military on March 22.

After Sheik Yassin’s killing, and the subsequent assassination of his successor, Abdul Aziz Rantisi, many Baghdadis have come to believe that American forces are working with Israel to destabilize Iraq.

To Abdul Majid Abbas, 25, an engineering student, the best proof of this theory is the failure of the coalition to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure.

“Americans could do better than this,” he said. “For example, after the 1991 war, everything was destroyed — electricity, water — these things were 70 percent destroyed.

“In three months, Saddam Hussein rebuilt everything again, even with sanctions. So how could he do that, and they can’t even do it in one year?”