Triple car bombings rock Baghdad, 31 killed

BAGHDAD, Wednesday (AFP) Three car bombs exploded minutes apart at a busy bus station and near a hospital during morning rush hour in the centre of the Iraqi capital Wednesday, killing at least 31 people.

An interior ministry official said two cars exploded 10 minutes apart in the Al-Nahda bus station and a third blew up later near Al-Kindi hospital in the same neighbourhood.

At least 31 people, including a woman and a child, were killed and 40 others wounded in the triple car bombs, he added.

Al-Nahda is a major bus station which links the capital with the predominantly Shiite regions to the south of Baghdad.

The third car bomb exploded in a leafy part of the neighbourhood where people usually seek shade in the blazing heat of Baghdad's summer, especially during morning rush hour.

Two civilian cars and some police vehicles were burnt-out by the blast, while a nearby house was badly damaged, an AFP correspondent reported.

Police fired warning shots to try to evacuate the area, fearful of suicide bomber targetting the gathering crowds.

The bombings occured after attempts to write the country's first post-Saddam Hussein constitution by a Monday deadline filed, prompting parliament to give politicians another week to complete the charter. "This is a one-time extension... if Iraq misses the next deadline, we have to dissolve the national assembly, the government will collapse and fresh elections will have to be held," Munther al-Fadhal, a Kurdish-allied member of the constitution told AFP Tuesday.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and other politicians downplayed the crisis.

"The demography of Iraq and its complicated political map" should be taken into consideration, Jaafari said. "The delay was for one week only and the pending points do not need a longer period." But politicians spoke of intractable differences between the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish representatives battling to hammer out an agreement by the new August 22 deadline.

"There are serious differences on issues like the sharing of national (oil) wealth and the demand of self-determination from the Kurds," Fadhal added.

The drafting of the constitution, due to be put to a referendum in October, is a key phase in Iraq's political transition which the United States and its allies hope could pave the way to a pullout of foreign troops. US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said he was "personally disappointed" there had been no agreement on time, but brushed aside the damaging scenario of negotiators missing the new deadline.