BAQOUBA, Iraq — A suicide car bomb exploded on a busy downtown boulevard in Baqouba yesterday, ripping through a commuter bus during morning rush hour, wrecking nearby shops and killing at least 68 Iraqis in one of the deadliest single insurgent attacks since the U.S. invasion.
Dozens of burned bodies were strewn in the street and piled on curbsides, and vehicles, fruit stalls and shops were a bloody tangle of twisted metal from the blast, which targeted Iraqis lined up outside a police recruiting station. Most of the victims were civilians or were among the hundreds of men waiting to join the force.
“These were all innocent Iraqis. There were no Americans,” an angry man shouted, pounding his hands against his head in grief, as Iraqis tried to cover the dead with pieces of cardboard in the city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
Many Iraqis have been infuriated by heavy civilian deaths in attacks by guerrillas who say they are fighting U.S. domination.
Nearly 1,000 Iraqi civilians and security personnel have been killed or wounded in guerrilla attacks since the U.S.-led coalition handed power to an Iraqi government, a senior U.S. official told Reuters news agency.
Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy director for operations for the U.S. military in Iraq, said insurgents were out to destroy the new government, which took over a month ago, Reuters reported.
The 10:13 a.m. attack was the deadliest since Americans handed power to an Iraqi government on June 28 and came three days ahead of a national conference aimed at creating an interim assembly — widely considered a vital step toward democracy. Iraqi officials have warned that attacks could intensify as the country tries to move forward.
Elsewhere, U.S. and other coalition forces were caught in fierce gunbattles with militants in several areas, including a fight with militants who are thought to have entered from neighboring Iran.
In Suwariyah, southeast of the capital, Iraqi forces backed by U.S. and Ukrainian troops launched a raid hunting for militants who had crossed from the Iranian border, said Polish Maj. Krzysztoz Plazuk, a coalition spokesman. The raid sparked a battle in which 35 guerrillas and seven Iraqi policemen were killed, 10 Iraqi police officers were wounded and 40 insurgents were captured.
When asked whether the guerrillas in the battle were Iranian or Iraqi, Maj. Plazuk said he could not comment.
In Anbar province west of Baghdad, insurgents killed two coalition troops, and enemy fire forced two U.S. military aircraft to make emergency landings, the military said.
Insurgents launched near-simultaneous attacks on several U.S. bases in Ramadi, wounding 10 soldiers, the military said. A guerrilla was killed, and during the fighting, a mortar hit an apartment building, killing an Iraqi woman.
Also yesterday, Al Jazeera television reported that an Iraqi militant group holding two Pakistani contractors had killed the men. The group, calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, said it kidnapped the Pakistanis because they were working for U.S. forces. The group had freed the Pakistanis’ Iraqi driver.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell condemned the attack in Baqouba during a visit to Cairo, where he met with President Hosni Mubarak on the first stop of a Mideast tour.
“[The bombing] was once again an attempt by murderers to deny the Iraqi people their dream of a peaceful country that rests on a solid foundation of freedom,” Mr. Powell told reporters. “We have to condemn it; we have to fight it. We must not let these kinds of tragic incidents deter us from our goal.”
U.S. forces have been trying to lower their profile and put Iraqi security forces in the front lines as the new government takes a more prominent role.
Two other U.S. soldiers were killed in the past 24 hours. One was killed by a roadside bomb yesterday in the town of Taji, about 12 miles north of the capital, the military said. Another American was killed by a bomb that struck his Humvee in Balad-Ruz late Tuesday, about 40 miles northwest of Baghdad, according to army spokesman Master Sgt. Robert Powell. The deaths raised the toll of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq to at least 906 since the war began, according to an Associated Press tally.
The Baqouba bombing shattered the bustling heart of a commercial district filled with shops, government buildings and the police station. Baqouba was once a center of support for deposed dictator Saddam Hussein and is now a hotbed of insurgents.
In addition to the 68 persons killed, 56 were wounded, according to Saad al-Amili, a Health Ministry official.
Witnesses said the bomb targeted men waiting outside the al-Najda police station to sign up for the force.
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