http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/international/middleeast/01iraq.html

October 1, 2004

2 Car Bombings in Iraq Kill 41, Many Children

By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 30 - A pair of car bombs tore through a street celebration on Thursday called to mark the opening of a new sewer plant, killing 41 Iraqis, at least 34 of them children, and wounding and maiming 139 more, in one of the most horrific attacks in this city since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The bombs, which exploded seconds apart, called forth a scene of dying children and grieving parents, some of them holding up blood-soaked clothes and howling in lament. Arms and legs lay in pools of blood, with survivors pointing to the walls of the sewer plant, now spattered with the flesh of the dead. Burned and blackened bodies floated past on the arms of the police.

The bombers drove their cars into a crowd of children that had gathered for the ceremony, waiting to receive handfuls of candy from the American soldiers. Ordinarily the young Iraqis would have been at school, but the chaos in the country has delayed the opening of the public schools.

"These people want to kill innocent children," said Ahmed Hussein, a 14-year-old wounded by the blasts. Ahmed spoke from his bed at Yarmouk Hospital, his arms and legs bloodied from shrapnel, while his mother, seated next to him, shuddered and sobbed.

"Many people were killed and many were injured, and they are all here now at the hospital, and I am one of them," the boy said.

Late Thursday night, as many as 3,000 American and Iraqi soldiers launched a military assault on the insurgent-held city of Samarra, in what appeared to be the first major operation to retake areas from guerrillas before the January elections.

The attack on the sewer plant bespoke the murderous calculation employed by the insurgents, who are trying to topple the American-backed enterprise in Iraq. Here was a symbol of progress, the completion of a sewer plant intended to serve 20,000 ordinary Iraqis in the Amel neighborhood in southern Baghdad. The pumping station was one of many public works projects carried out by the military here; the Army's First Cavalry Division has also built a medical clinic, football fields and other water stations. This one cost $400,000.

"These ceremonies are pretty well attended by people in the neighborhood," said Lt. Col. James Hutton, the spokesman for the First Cavalry Division, explaining the crowd. "They see it for what it is, as something that is going to help them in their lives."

Ten American soldiers were wounded in the attack; the newly refurbished sewage plant escaped unscathed.

The bombing of the ceremony was the worst of the day's violence in Iraq, but there was plenty elsewhere, five car bombs in all.

Less than a mile away in the same neighborhood, a car bomb crashed into an Iraqi National Guard post, causing an unknown number of casualties. Earlier in the day, another car bomb struck a military checkpoint, killing one American soldier and two Iraqi soldiers and wounding 60 more.

An American soldier was killed when a rocket landed inside a logistical base in Baghdad, the military said Thursday. In the northern city of Tal Afar, the scene of heavy fighting earlier this month, a fifth car bomb killed four Iraqis and wounded 16 others. In Mosul, also in the north, two Iraqi policemen were killed in a drive-by shooting.

The recent run of car bombings and other killings is part of a sharp upturn in the violence, which American and Iraqi officials believe is linked to the approach of the American presidential election in November and the Iraqi elections scheduled for January. Last month, attacks against American forces reached their highest level yet, with nearly 2,700 attacks.

"We are obviously seeing a major onslaught by the terrorists," Barham Salih, Iraq's deputy prime minister, said. "They are trying to derail the democratic process."

Mr. Salih reaffirmed the Iraqi government's intention to hold nationwide elections by the end of January, despite the difficult security situation. He pledged that the government, with the help of American forces, would reassert control over many of the areas that have slipped into insurgent hands. He did not say how that could be done, or when, but he promised that the insurgents would not be offered any deal that did not include the surrendering of weapons.

"It is not possible to reach an accommodation with these people," he said.

The American military said it had carried out a "precision strike" on a "known terrorist safe house" in Falluja used by the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant believed to be behind many of the deadliest car bombings here. In a statement, the military said "significant secondary explosions" erupted after the strike, suggesting the placement of munitions inside the house. The strike, begun at 5 a.m., was the latest in a series of almost daily air attacks on the city, which American forces turned over to the insurgents in April.

The American military said that it had taken care to avoid killing innocents in the strike, and that it had confirmed the presence of militants in the building with several sources of intelligence. The strike appeared, nonetheless, to have claimed the lives of at least some civilians.

An Iraqi member of the Baghdad bureau of The New York Times who visited the scene of the strike found two women and children among the four people who had been killed. The other was a man. Neighbors said those killed had nothing to do with the insurgency, and they blamed a misled informant working for the Americans for the airstrike.

"Why don't the Americans question their sources about the credibility of their information?" asked a 27-year-old neighbor, who gave his name as Abu Ammar. "How many times have they struck innocent people in what they call precision strikes?"

In the statement released after the strike, the Americans did not discount the possibility that civilians might have been killed. But they placed responsibility in the hands of the insurgents, who they said had put the civilians at risk by hiding among them.

After the car bombings of the sewage plant, a series of wrenching scenes unfolded in the halls of the Yarmouk Hospital, where most of the dead and wounded were taken. One after the other, ambulances and private cars rolled up to unload their burned and bleeding cargo.

The dead and wounded were overflowing the wards, forcing a group of Iraqi National Guard soldiers to keep many family members waiting outside. Others, already certain of the fate of their loved ones, waited for relatives to deliver the coffins. Still others waited for orderlies to bring them certificates of death.

"He's dying! he's dying!" an Iraqi man yelled, pushing his way through the hospital doors with his bleeding father. "You must do something!"

The Iraqi National Guard troops quickly pulled him outside.

Inside the hospital, amid grieving and hysterical parents, ordinary people tried to explain the day's madness. One woman named Addela Jasim, whose brother, Karim, was wounded in the attack, blamed foreign militants for the violence, claiming that the crime was beyond the reach of her countrymen.

"There is no way Iraqis can kill Iraqis," she said.

But as is often the case during the worst moments here, the Iraqi survivors directed much of their anger at the Americans, despite the good will shown in the rebuilding of the sewage plant.

Sawsan Kamil, 11, lay in a hospital bed, her face covered with wounds, while two of her relatives discussed the likelihood that the attack had been carried out by American soldiers.

"The Americans blocked the neighborhood this morning," said Hussein, Sawsan's brother. "So how could anybody have sneaked a bomb into it?"

Bahaa Hamid, another relative, agreed.

"The Americans want to stay as long as possible in Iraq," he said. "That is why they are creating chaos in the country."

Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting for this article.