- BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) --
A minibus packed with explosives blew up near a police station and a market
north of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing more than 70 and wounding 30 in
the worst attack since the handover of power one month ago.
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- The powerful suicide bomb left a sea of destruction,
obliterating market stalls and destroying several buildings. It raises
fears of a fresh insurgent campaign just days before Iraq holds a major
political conference to plot its future.
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- It was the worst death toll from a single bomb attack
in Iraq since a blast outside a mosque in the holy city of Najaf last August
killed more than 80 people.
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- Reuters Television pictures showed at least a dozen bodies
scattered across a street, some of them still on fire.
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- A severely wounded man, his clothes burned and torn and
his body covered in blood, sat among smoldering ruins with several dead,
some of whom looked like children, lying near him.
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- A Health Ministry official said more than 70 were killed
and 30 wounded in the blast shortly after 10 a.m. (0600 GMT) in Baquba,
an often violent town 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad. She said the toll
was expected to rise further.
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- Twenty-one people traveling in a minibus alongside the
one that detonated were killed, an Interior Ministry source said.
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- It was the deadliest day in Iraq since June 24, when
more than 100 people were killed in a string of bomb blasts, suicide attacks
and armed assaults across the country.
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- The blast also came a month to the day after the interim
government took back sovereignty, and three days before a major political
conference to chart Iraq's future.
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- There were several other incidents across the country
on Wednesday, creating the impression of a coordinated campaign.
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- A mortar or rocket struck a busy street in Baghdad, killing
one person and wounding five, witnesses said. South of Baghdad, seven members
of Iraq's security forces, backed by U.S. and Ukrainian troops, died in
a gunbattle in which 35 insurgents were killed, Poland's defense ministry
said.
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- No U.S. or Ukrainian forces were wounded or killed.
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- SEA OF DESTRUCTION
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- As well as tearing through scores of civilians as they
shopped at the market, the Baquba bomb struck a group of men lining up
at a nearby recruiting office for the Iraqi police.
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- "We had gathered them at one place to register their
names. There was a queue, when suddenly this vehicle appeared and exploded,"
said a police officer at the scene.
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- Firefighters arrived to douse the flames, sometimes having
to point their hoses at still burning dead bodies.
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- "God bless them, what have they done?" shouted
one man, referring to the victims.
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- Baquba, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite town, is home to many
former members of the Iraqi army and has experienced frequent car bombings
and suicide attacks over the past year.
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- Many of those have targeted Iraq's police and National
Guard, who guerrillas regard as collaborating with U.S. and other foreign
troops stationed in Iraq.
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- SECURITY RISKS
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- The violence comes three days before Iraq is due to convene
a national conference in which 1,000 delegates will gather in Baghdad to
weigh the country's future and elect a 100-member National Council to oversee
the interim government.
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- The event is billed as a crucial next step in Iraq's
transition to democracy ahead of elections planned for January, but there
are security concerns, particularly with so many people converging on the
capital.
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- U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces have been planning
the security for weeks and are particularly concerned about suicide car
bomb attacks like one that assassinated the former head of the Iraqi Governing
Council earlier this year.
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- Fouad Massoum, the organizer of the event, said on Tuesday
he was committed to holding it this month and said the credibility of Iraq's
new government depended on it.
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- "Credibility is essential because any delay would
be explained in a negative way, especially given that Iraq lived for decades
under promises that were never fulfilled," he said, adding it would
start on July 31 for one or two days.
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- Conference participants also face the threat of kidnapping
after dozens of people, mostly foreign truck drivers, have been kidnapped
by insurgents in the past three months and threatened with death if their
employers or national governments don't pull out of Iraq.
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- In the past week, several senior Iraq officials have
been seized or escaped attempts, too. On Wednesday, a Web Site posted a
picture of what it said was the severed head of a Bulgarian taken hostage
earlier this month.
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- - Additional reporting by Dean Yates, Mariam Karouny
and Edmund Blair in Baghdad
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