Car bomb kills more than 50 in Iraq

KUFA: At least 54 people, mostly day labourers, were killed and dozens of others wounded as a car bomb blew up on Tuesday in the centre of Iraq's Shiite shrine city of Kufa, security and medical sources said.   

At least 105 others were wounded in the attack, said Dr Mundher al-Adhari, chief health official of the southern city of Najaf, adding that most of the victims were young men.   

Witnesses said a car drove up and parked in the square in front of Kufa's grand mosque, immediately attracting a crowd of people assuming it was a contractor looking for day labourers.   

"A blue car pulled into the area and dozens of people surrounded the car thinking that they were looking for workers," said Nasser Kadhim, who lost his brother in the blast and was himself wounded.   

"A few minutes later the explosion happened and everything was thrown into the air."   

The blast was the third attack with a heavy death toll in as many days, all of them apparently motivated by sectarian divisions. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki condemned the latest bombing and vowed to punish the perpetrators.   

The luring of innocent civilians next to a booby-trapped vehicles appearing to offer work or cheap food is a ploy frequently used by the more extremist insurgent groups.   

The latest blast came only a day after a grisly market massacre killed 48 people, mostly Shiites, in a small town just south of Baghdad -- yet another bloody sectarian-tinged killing.   

Initially these attacks were largely confined to the Baghdad area, but in recent weeks attacks targeting specific sectarian groups appear to be spreading around the country.   

On Sunday, a suicide bomber blew himself up and destroyed a coffeeshop used by Turkmen Shiites, killing 28, in the northern town of Tuz Kharmatu, not far from the oil city of Kirkuk.   

Kufa itself, with its Shiite holy shrines and constant stream of pilgrims, has been targeted with bombs before by what many believe are extremist Sunni Arab insurgents.   

On July 6, a bomb attack against a bus for Iranian pilgrims outside the Maytham al-Tammar shrine next to the same mosque killed 12 people and wounded dozens, most of them Iranian nationals.   

Elsewhere on Tuesday, eight people were killed and three wounded, most of them policemen, in an attack on a police patrol near Kirkuk, police said.   

And in a gruesome incident, one sheep seller was killed in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, when a bomb hidden under a girl's severed head exploded as he lifted it, security sources said.   

This week's attacks have left at least 130 dead across Iraq and come as Maliki's fledgling government struggles to deal with the issue of security, which he has singled out as his top priority.   

In Baghdad, which has seen the deadliest sectarian attacks, a month-old security plan that put 50,000 US and Iraqi soldiers on the streets seems unable to stem the tide of killing.   

The seeming impotence of government troops has been thrown in sharp relief by a series of brazen midday kidnappings of prominent officials, often involving dozens of attackers.   

Increasingly, US officials are acknowledging that militias are part of the security problem in Baghdad and several operations have targeted specific militia leaders in past weeks.   

In the British-administrated south of the country, a crackdown has been launched against Shiite militias.   

At least five Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded in clashes with British troops early Tuesday during an operation in the centre of the port city of Basra targeting weapons caches, a security source said.   

The once relatively peaceful city of Basra has in recent months been riven by battles between rival militias and gangs smuggling oil, prompting British forces to step up operations.   

On Sunday, two suspected militiamen were taken into custody at the cost of a British soldier's life.   

The US military on Tuesday reported the killing of a soldier in an explosion south of Baghdad, raising to 2,549 its total military losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.