Bombs kill more than 100 in Baghdad

Baghdad (Iraq), Apr 18: Car bombs killed at least 119 people in Baghdad today, hours after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Iraq would take security control of the whole country from foreign forces by the end of the year.

One car bomb alone in the mainly Shi-ite Sadriya neighbourhood killed 75 people and wounded 100, police said.

Maliki is under growing pressure to say when US troops will leave, but the rash of at least five bomb attacks in mainly Shi'ite areas underscored the huge security challenges.

The combined attacks were the deadliest in Baghdad since US and Iraqi forces began deploying thousands more troops onto the city's streets in February under a plan seen as a final attempt to halt Iraq's slide into sectarian civil war.

Police said the bomb in the central Sadriya neighbourhood, possibly placed in a bus, exploded at a busy intersection near a popular market. Reuters witnesses said many women and children were among the dead.

In another attack, police said a suicide car bomber killed 30 people at a checkpoint in Sadr City, the Shi'ite stronghold of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. A third car bomb attack in the capital killed 10 people, police said.

''I saw dozens of dead bodies. Some people were burned alive inside minibuses. Nobody could reach them after the explosion,'' said one of the Reuters witnesses at Sadriya, describing scenes of mayhem.

''There were pieces of flesh all over the place. Women were screaming and shouting for their loved ones who died,'' said the witness who did not wish to be identified.

More than 160 people were wounded in the series of attacks.

The attacks could inflame sectarian passions in Baghdad, especially among Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, which has been keeping a low profile since the new security crackdown began.

Sadr withdrew his six ministers from Maliki's cabinet on Monday to press for a pull-out timetable for the 146,000 US troops in Iraq.

Baghdad has been the epicentre of violence in Iraq since suspected al Qaeda militants blew up a holy Shi'ite shrine in the city of Samarra in February last year.

Sectarian death squads killings have declined in the capital under the two-month-old security offensive. But car bombs are much harder to stop, U. military officials say.

In a speech delivered on his behalf at a ceremony marking the handover of southern Maysan province from British to Iraqi control, Maliki said three provinces in the autonomous Kurdistan region would be next, followed by Kerbala and Wasit provinces.

''Then it will be province by province until we achieve (this transfer) before the end of the year,'' Maliki said in the speech delivered by National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie.

Maysan is the fourth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be handed to Iraqi security forces, joining Muthanna, Najaf and Dhi Qar, all predominantly Shi'ite and relatively calm regions in the south.

Maliki says Iraq's security forces will only take back control from foreign forces when ready, and he urged patience.

''Some people have demanded a timetable to end the foreign presence in Iraq,'' Maliki said in his speech read at the ceremony in the Maysan capital Amara, 365 km south of Baghdad.

''I tell them this is the demand of every patriotic person (and) ... we are working to create the objective circumstances for this withdrawal.''

Reuters