Baghdad, December 09: Iraqi leaders were set to come under fire Wednesday, having failed to prevent a spate of attacks in Baghdad that killed 127 people, the third major set of bombings to hit the capital since August.
The blasts undermined the government’s claims of improved security and MPs quickly demanded that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the government’s security ministers answer for any failings that led to the attacks.
The United States, United Nations, Arab League and Britain, meanwhile, led international condemnation of Tuesday’s bombings, with UN chief Ban Ki-moon calling them “horrendous” and “unacceptable.”
Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, whose department is responsible for police forces across Iraq, welcomed being questioned by lawmakers in the Council of Representatives over the attacks, which a senior security spokesman said bore “the touch of Al-Qaeda.”
“I am ready to go to parliament on the condition that the session be public,” Bolani told AFP.
The bombings all struck Baghdad within minutes of each other on Tuesday morning.
One suicide attacker detonated his payload at a finance ministry office, another struck at a tunnel leading to the labour ministry and a third drove a four-wheel-drive car into a courthouse.
A fourth suicide bomber in a car struck a police patrol in Dora in southern Baghdad, causing 15 deaths, 12 of them students at a nearby technical college, an interior ministry official said.
Another car bomb hit interior ministry offices in central Baghdad.
An interior ministry official said 127 people had been killed and 448 wounded in the bombings.
Maliki called Tuesday’s attacks a “cowardly” attempt “to cause chaos… and hinder the election,” and said they were deliberately timed to come after MPs on Sunday agreed on a new electoral law.
He blamed “foreign elements” who backed Al-Qaeda.
The courthouse bombing destroyed a large part of the building, with falling concrete killing several people, emergency workers said.
Mangled
wrecks of cars, some flipped on their roofs, lined the street opposite the courthouse, and several parked vehicles were crushed by collapsed blast walls.
Near the finance ministry, several houses were completely destroyed and a two-metre (6.5-foot) deep crater marked the site of the explosion.
Although no group has yet claimed responsibility, the timing of the blasts and the fact that three targeted government buildings suggested an Al-Qaeda operation.
–PTI