Global Arab Network | Iraq admits errors - Violence strikes Baghdad

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Iraq admits errors - Violence strikes Baghdad

Global Arab Network - - Adam Turner

Thursday, 20 August 2009 11:59

Baghdad families collect dead relatives from bombings in the capital which killed 101people -- the scale of the carnage prompting Iraqi security officials to admit they have made mistakes.

At least two people have been killed in a bicycle bombing in Baghdad, a day after a series of bombings left 101 people dead and 500 more wounded in the Iraqi capital.

Police and medical officials said at least 10 people were injured in Thursday's bombing, when an explosive attached to a bicycle went off in a market near the commercial Al-Rasheed street.

The blast followed the deadliest day of bombings in Iraq in more than a year when a string of explosions, including two lorry bombs, detonated near the government and diplomatic Green Zone in central Baghdad on Wednesday.

The relatives of people killed in Wednesday's attacks gathered outside a morgue in Baghdad on Thursday to collect the bodies of their loved ones for burial.

Witnesses said Wednesday's attacks appeared to target the foreign and finance ministries.

Television footage showed that the force of the explosions had blown out some of the windows of Iraq's parliamentary building.

Two mortars also landed inside the heavily protected Green Zone, while a third landed outside.

The area, the site of government ministries and foreign embassies, has frequently been targeted with rocket and mortar fire.

Major-General Qassim Atta, the spokesman for the Iraqi army's Baghdad operations, blamed Wednesday's attack on Baathist supporters, a reference to the political party of Saddam Hussein, the executed former president.

Iraqi authorities have said they are investigating, and Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, has ordered a widespread review of security forces in Baghdad.

Authorities have also detained 10 army and police commanders who were responsible for overseeing security, traffic and intelligence services in the attacked areas.

The attacks came six years to the day after a lorry bomb exploded outside the UN offices at the Canal Hotel killing 22 people. (Reuters, AFP, AP, UBI)

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