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HILLA, Iraq - A suicide bomber killed 22 people south of Baghdad this morning (NZ time) by offering poor Shi'ite workers day labouring jobs and then detonating explosives packed inside his minibus as the crowd gathered around it.
On a day when Syria's foreign minister was due on a rare visit to hear Iraqi and US concern about Sunni suicide bombers coming in through Syria, a Sunni Islamist group claimed the attack in Hilla, calling it revenge for a mass kidnap from a Sunni-run Baghdad ministry building last week.
Three near-simultaneous explosions, at least two of them car bombs, killed at least six people and wounded 30 at a bus station in mainly Shi'ite east Baghdad.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem was due to fly to Baghdad for talks with Iraqi leaders likely to focus on repeated US and Iraqi complaints that Damascus has done too little to stop the flow of insurgents and weapons across its border.
With US President George W. Bush looking for fresh ideas that could help calm violence and let American troops go home, there have been new calls from his allies and in Washington for him to talk to Syria and Iran, both at loggerheads with the United States and blamed by it for fomenting trouble in Iraq.
Sunni Muslim insurgents are battling Iraqi and US forces. The US military said it killed eight insurgents in air and ground attacks in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Saturday after troops came under mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire.
Police reported clashes and a killing spree the same day by rebels in the violent city of Baquba, northeast of the capital.
A spokesman for police in the mainly Shi'ite city of Hilla, 100km south of the capital, said 49 people were wounded in the early morning blast, when shrapnel tore through the expectant crowd as labourers jostled to come closer.
The tactic has been used before by al Qaeda-linked Sunni militants at spots where men congregate in the hope of casual work. Hilla is often a target for attacks, including the bloodiest single bombing since the US invasion, in which a suicide car bomber killed 125 people in February 2005.
"I was standing with other labourers when the minibus came and the driver asked for labourers. Everybody ran towards him and then he detonated his vehicle," Ali Mohammed told Reuters as he lay in a local hospital, his left thigh bandaged.
"I saw the fire and collapsed on the ground," he said.
There were few details of the co-ordinated blasts at the Mashtel bus garage in Baghdad.
Continuing bloodshed between majority Shi'ites and once dominant minority Sunnis has killed thousands of Iraqis and raised fears Iraq is teetering on the edge of all-out civil war.
"In response to the crimes of the Shi'ites ... and the kidnapping of tens of unarmed Sunni people from a department of the Ministry of Higher Education ... heroes from the Brigades of Lions of Righteousness blew up a car bomb ... in Hilla," the Islamist group said in an internet posting.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's national unity government has struggled to curb the sectarian violence gripping Iraq but is under growing US pressure to show some progress in reaching a political accommodation with Sunnis and reining in militias blamed for much of the bloodshed.
Sunni leaders have accused Shi'ite militias of being behind the mass kidnap at the Higher Education Ministry by gunmen in police uniforms last Tuesday.
The kidnapping has sparked government infighting, with the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry declaring all the hostages freed and the Sunni-run Education Ministry saying 66 are unaccounted for. Tensions have also been exacerbated by an arrest warrant issued for top Sunni cleric, Harith al-Dari.
- REUTERS
