Baghdad suicide bombs kill at least 60

Updated at 8.20pm

BAGHDAD: A pair of suicide car bombs killed at least 60 people, mostly Shiite casual labourers, in downtown Baghdad on Tuesday as Iraq's divided government struggled to deal with the escalating violence.   

Insurgents, meanwhile, again targeted a revered Shiite shrine in the northern town of Samarra by placing a bomb at its entrance that exploded as it was being defused.   

The golden-dommed mosque was bombed on February 22 by Al-Qaeda in Iraq sparking nationwide Shiite-Sunni sectarian strife that continues to this day, leaving thousands dead in its wake.   

Tuesday's coordinated blasts in the capital -- also believed to be sectarian in nature -- came as leaders in Baghdad and Washington were working to come up with a new political and military formula to halt the rising tide of chaos threatening to tear the fragile country apart.   

US President George W Bush was locked in crisis meetings with policy experts and on Tuesday was to meet Iraq's top Sunni elected official and hold a video conference with his Baghdad ambassador to decide on major policy changes.   

In Baghdad, party politicians have been meeting with an eye to restructuring the ruling coalition, while the prime minister hopes to hold a national reconciliation conference on Saturday.   

At least 60 people were killed and 221 wounded in the devastating blasts that ripped through the busy Tayaran square at 7:00 am (0400 GMT) where Shiite labourers from Sadr City gather to look for day work.   

Witnesses described how a pair of vehicles was involved in the attack. First a BMW car rear-ended a police vehicle and exploded, prompting crowds of day labourers and stall holders to take shelter on the other side of the square. Two minutes later a pickup truck ploughed into the crowd and exploded.   

"After the explosion, not a single person in the square was standing. I thought everyone was dead," said Khaled Nasser, a labourer who searched the wreckage for four of his companions.   

"I found them all cut in half -- no legs -- and for some I could only find their heads," he said.   

Massive car bombs are the hallmark of Sunni extremist attacks on Shiites in Baghdad and in the past few weeks there have been numerous bloody blasts, including a series in Sadr City last month that killed more than 200 people.   

The city is in the grip of a cycle of revenge attacks triggered by these blasts as Shiite militias launch mortars and night-time death squad raids on rival Sunni neighbourhoods.   

"The attackers are outlaws and without religion," Sunni speaker of parliament Mahmud Mashhadani said in parliament. "I demand all the armed groups to announce a truce for two months."   

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki once again pointed the finger at the takfiris (Sunni extremists) and their "Saddamist allies".   

"This massacre shows that those terror groups are endeavouring to create chaos and killing, besides arousing sectarianism in the country," he said.   

In the wake of a pessimistic appraisal of the situation by the Iraq Study Group -- a high-level US panel of foreign policy experts -- Bush has been holding meetings to come up with a new approach.   

The US president has met with Iraqi leaders, including Maliki and top Shiite figure Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and was to meet with top Sunni leader Tareq al-Hashemi later Tuesday, officials said.   

The bomb at the Samarra shrine caused minimal damage, a US military statement said.   

Samarra police discovered the device at the mosque entrance in a routine patrol and called in a US army bomb squad.   

"The EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team was successful in removing the detonation wire and fuse," it said. "However, during their attempt to remove the bomb, it exploded and caused minimal damage to the door and entryway."   

In other violence Tuesday, an Iraqi cameraman Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah working with US-based Associated Press Television Network (APTN) was shot dead in the northern city of Mosul, the organisation reported.   

At least 127 journalists and media workers have been killed across Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.   

Elsewhere six people were killed while police found 13 bodies in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.   

Bulgarian Prime Minister Serguei Stanichev arrived on a previously unannounced visit to Baghdad and met Maliki and discussed strengthening relations between their two countries.