News Flash

Car bombs rock Iraqi capital, 80 killed

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-08 16:54

BAGHDAD: At least 80 people were killed and 128 wounded when four or more large car bombs shook Baghdad on Tuesday, the latest high-profile blasts apparently aimed at sensitive Iraqi government buildings, police said.

The explosions rattled buildings across the capital, and undermined a fragile sense of security ahead of an auction of oilfield contracts this weekend, when executives from top oil firms will fly into town, and before an election next year.

Three people died and five were wounded in a first blast in a southern Baghdad suburb, police said.

Others were killed and wounded in at least three successive explosions in the city centre half an hour later, police said.

"Civilians and security personnel have definitely been kiled. We all announce more details as we have them," Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi told Reuters.

Some police sources said there had been five explosions, two near judicial buildings, one near a university, another near in a central Baghdad commercial district and the earlier one in the south. Smoke billowed from at least two sites.

The blasts are the first large, high-profile explosions in Baghdad since Oct. 25, when two massive truck bombs killed 155 people at the justice ministry and Baghdad governorate headquarters.

A smaller blast, which some police officials said might have involved the accidental explosion of a hidden stockpile of munitions, killed seven children at a school in the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City on Monday.

The major bomb attacks in the heart of the Iraqi capital in October and a similar earlier attack in August marked a change of tactics for Iraq's stubborn insurgency.

Rather than stage frequent smaller-scale attacks against soft targets like marketplaces or mosques, insurgent groups like al Qaeda now appear to be aiming for spectacular and less frequent strikes against heavily defended government targets.

Overall violence triggered by the 2003 US-led invasion has fallen dramatically. The health ministry in November reported the lowest monthly death toll of Iraqi civilians in 6-1/2 years.