Bus ride in Baghdad may get you home, or killed

BAGHDAD, May 1 (Reuters) Whenever minibus driver Hussein Khalaf starts his engine he wonders whether it will be his last run through Baghdad.

His route is short but he knows insurgents have stepped up bombings of buses in their bid to plunge Iraq into bloody chaos, and his passengers have already fallen victim to the violence.

''I was driving back from the bus terminal when two big blasts exploded. My minibus was hit and two of the passengers were shot in an exchange of fire afterwards,'' said Khalaf, wiping his windshield for a new trip a few days later.

''My trip lasts almost 30 minutes, but it's full of danger.'' A bomb planted inside a minibus exploded in Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City slum yesterday, killing at least two people and wounding six, police sources said.

A similar bomb attack on a minibus in Sadr City last week killed two people and wounded five.

Attacks on crowded bus terminals and minibuses in Baghdad and other cities, along with other rebel violence, add to pressure on Prime Minister-designate Nuri Maliki to form a unity government of Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds to avert civil war.

In one of the biggest attacks, in August, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle at the Nahda bus station in central Baghdad and a second car loaded with explosives blew up inside the station parking lot, killing at least 43 people.

Less spectacular attacks on minibuses don't get as much attention but they are just as traumatising for the victims and their families, like a bombing that killed five people in the town of Hilla south of Baghdad in February.

Interior Ministry officials say they believe insurgents are targeting minibuses more often because they service Baghdad's outskirts as well as the city centre, enabling them to spread violence and inflict a heavy psychological toll.

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