Series of blasts kill 50 as Iraq eyes US handover

IRAQ: A series of explosions devastated homes in Baghdad just before nightfall killing 50 people and wounding five times as many, some of them in an apartment block that collapsed, government officials said.

A senior Interior Ministry official and sources in police headquarters and at some of the seven blast sites said rockets hit neighbourhoods across the mainly Shi'ite east of the city.

Amid confusion in the darkness, they rejected an account from an army general on state television who said militants had planted explosives and detonated them in a coordinated attack.

The blasts came as families gathered for the start of the weekend and as President George W. Bush launched a pre-election round of speeches to rally Americans to maintain their military presence in Iraq as part of a wider war on Muslim "terrorists".

"Buildings have been flattened," a policeman told Reuters from one blast site. "There are still people trapped."

The mystery attack was the deadliest after several bloody days in Baghdad as militants defy a major security crackdown.

Along with the arrival of U.S. armoured reinforcements in a southern city where Iraqi troops and Shi'ite militiamen fought to a bloody standstill this week, it underlined the scale of the task facing Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

He said his new, U.S.-trained forces would be able to take charge of security in most of Iraq by the end of the year. But after a month that saw U.S. deaths up nearly 50 percent to at least 64, U.S. troop levels are at their highest since January and up 10 percent on July at 140,000, the Pentagon said.

The Interior Ministry official put the Baghdad toll at 50 dead. Health Minister Ali al-Shemari said 257 people were treated for wounds. No official would say who was responsible.

A Web site used by Sunni militants published a statement purportedly from al Qaeda's umbrella organisation in Iraq. It renewed the sort of call for a holy war on the Shi'ite majority that many fear could help provoke all-out sectarian civil war.

After three years of Sunni rebel attacks, violence by Shi'ite militias, both against minorities and fellow Shi'ites embroiled in power struggles in the oil-rich south, now kills more Iraqis than the insurgency, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

Despite recent bloodshed, the security drive in Baghdad has cut killings by half in the past month, officials have said. In the first of several speeches round the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush told veterans in Salt Lake City: "If America were to pull out before Iraq could defend itself, the consequences would be absolutely predictable and absolutely disastrous. We would be handing Iraq over to our worst enemies.

"They would have a new sanctuary ... with huge oil riches."

Baghdad, Friday, Reuters