Synchronized blasts kill more than 130

BAGHDAD —  A devastating series of bombings in a crowded market in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad and in a predominantly Shiite town north of the capital killed more than 130 Iraqis on Thursday, the same day a new U.S. envoy asserted at his swearing-in that the American mission in Iraq was not an “impossible” one.

The bombings, part of a pattern of attacks in predominantly Shiite areas, threatened to further inflame sectarian tensions that are at the boiling point across much of Iraq. U.S. officials believe the attacks are part of a systematic effort by Al Qaeda militants to foment violence by Shiite militias and scuttle the latest security effort.

Thursday’s attacks in the capital’s Shaab neighborhood and in the town of Khalis, in volatile Diyala province, appeared to have been meticulously synchronized to inflict severe casualties.

In Baghdad’s Shalal market, two suicide bombers struck almost simultaneously at either end of a dense maze of shopping stalls, killing 80 people and injuring more than 100.

“The flesh of one man’s face was stripped to his skull,” said Ahmed Laith, who sells nylon tracksuits from a booth in the center of Shalal market.

“These were just people shopping; what did these women and children do to deserve to be killed?”

Security central issue

The fresh round of violence underscored the enormous difficulty of the task facing Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, a career diplomat who once warned that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein could set off spiraling strife between the nation’s Sunni Arabs and majority Shiites.

At his swearing-in, Crocker told an audience, mainly workers at the U.S. Embassy where the ceremony was held, that security was “without question” the central issue in Iraq.

“Terrorists, insurgents and militias continue to threaten security in Baghdad and around the country,” said the 57-year-old diplomat.

Fulfilling U.S. goals in Iraq would be hard, he said, but added, “If I thought it was impossible, I would not be standing here today.”

The bombs at both locations exploded moments apart about 6 p.m., an hour when the streets were full of shoppers hurrying to buy provisions before Friday, the Muslim holy day. The close timing of the explosions appeared designed to ensnare would-be rescuers and those who rushed to search for loved ones caught in the initial blasts.

Victims were so mangled, hospital officials said, that the casualty count from the Shaab bombing was based on a crude tally of body parts.

In Khalis, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, four powerful vehicle bombs exploded in quick succession within a radius of less than half a mile, hurling body parts in all directions, witnesses said.

At least 52 people were killed and about 80 more injured in the coordinated assault, officials said.

“I saw a man from a family I know carrying his son’s burned and charred body,” Ahmed Mahmoud, 36, said. “He was screaming like a madman.”

The town’s main hospital was quickly overwhelmed, running out of basic supplies, doctors said. Local media reports said one of the vehicles used in the attack was an ambulance.

At the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Crocker, a fluent speaker of Arabic, paid tribute to Iraqi employees, saying, “You are the heroes of the country, in the true sense of the word.” Crocker, who replaces Zalmay Khalilzad, defended the Bush administration, which suffered a stinging rebuke Thursday when the U.S. Senate backed a proposal to set a nonbinding target date of March 31, 2008, for ending combat operations in Iraq.

“President Bush’s policy is the right one,” Crocker said. “There has been progress; there is also much more to be done.”

Crocker served a brief stint in Baghdad as director of governance under the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003.

Thursday’s attacks came two days after a pair of truck bombs in a largely Shiite area of the northern town of Tall Afar, near the border with Syria, killed more than 80 people. The bombings triggered a round of reprisal killings that local officials said left more than 70 Sunni men dead. The U.S. military on Thursday disputed that figure, saying the death count was closer to 30.

The governor of Nineveh province, where the predominantly Turkmen town is located, said 18 police officers had been arrested by Iraqi troops, but all were released. Gov. Duraid Kashmoula gave no explanation for either the detention or release of the officers.

Most of the Sunni men were killed execution-style, officials said. An American military official in the nearby city of Mosul acknowledged that some of the killings had been carried out by men dressed as Iraqi police. But the official, Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, said the killers could have been militiamen who had obtained the uniforms.

Tall Afar remained under curfew Thursday, with U.S. and Iraqi forces patrolling the area.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki condemned the spate of bombings, calling them “criminal acts” aimed at sowing divisions among Iraqis.

“We are determined to pursue the criminals and those who support them and bring them to justice,” he said in a statement.

There has been a surge in bombings in Iraqi towns and cities as American and Iraqi forces have launched a crackdown on insurgents in the capital.

Defying security effort

In Baghdad, the attack in the Shaab district may have been intended to send a message of defiance in the face of the security sweep; the neighborhood was the scene of some of the earliest U.S.-led raids when the push was launched in February.

Even before the massive evening attacks in Baghdad and Khalis, violence had left its mark. Soon after Crocker spoke, a car bomb struck a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood of the capital, killing three people, and an explosion near a Shiite mosque in the town of Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, killed six.

Two officials survived assassination attempts. Assailants in Baghdad fired on the convoy of the country’s national traffic police chief, Gen. Jafar Kadhim, killing two bodyguards. And in the northern city of Kirkuk, a provincial police official, Col. Najat Mohammed, survived a car bombing targeting his home.

The daily count of bodies found in Baghdad has been creeping upward, after dropping off in the early days of the security sweep. Iraqi officials reported that 25 corpses were found Thursday. All the victims had been shot.

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Times staff writers Saif Hameed, Said Rifai and Wail Alhafith in Baghdad and a special correspondent in Diyala province contributed to this report.