Suicide bombers kill more than 100 in Iraq

Baghdad (Iraq), Mar 30: Suicide bombers killed more than 100 people in a Shi'ite neighbourhood of Baghdad and in a mainly Shi'ite town north of the Iraqi capital in a wave of sectarian violence yesterday, police said.

A suicide bomber killed around 60 people in a market in the Shaab district of northern Baghdad, police sources said, in what appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks on Shi'ite districts and towns.

At about the same time, three suicide car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in Khalis, 80 km north of Baghdad, killing about 50 people and wounding scores, police and hospital officials said.

The blasts follow a sharp upsurge in sectarian bloodshed, particularly outside the Iraqi capital, that has killed scores. Iraq has been swept by violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis that has killed tens of thousands.

On Tuesday two truck bombs killed 85 people in a Shi'ite area of Tal Afar in northern Iraq. In the hours after those blasts Shi'ite gunmen, including police, shot dead up to 70 Sunni Arab men in reprisal.

In Khalis, one car bomb exploded in a commercial area and a second at a police checkpoint leading to the police headquarters and court building, police said. A third bomber attacked police patrols rushing to the scene.

''It was a scene of horror. There were charred bodies and human remains scattered about,'' said one policeman who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said up to 48 people had been killed in the blasts. A second police source said more than 50 had been killed and more than 100 wounded. A local hospital official said they had received 40 bodies.

New US ambassador Ryan Crocker told his swearing-in ceremony that ''terrorists, insurgents and militias continue to threaten security in Baghdad and around the country'' and called Iraq America's ''most critical foreign policy challenge''.

The US Senate has defied President George W Bush by passing a war-funding bill setting a goal of withdrawing all American combat soldiers from Iraq within a year.

Bush, who has vowed to veto the measure, is sending up to 30,000 additional troops to Iraq, most of them to support a major security crackdown under way in Baghdad, epicentre of the violence. While this crackdown has succeeded in reducing the number of deaths in the capital, violence has surged elsewhere.

Reuters