Bomb and gun attacks mainly targeting security forces, including two suicide car bombs minutes apart on police stations, killed at least 19 people in Baghdad’s deadliest day in more than a month.
The violence, in which nearly 70 people were also wounded, signalled insurgents’ ability to plan and carry out coordinated attacks on well-secured targets, as Iraq weighs its options over a post-2011 American military training mission.
Two suicide attackers detonated their explosives-packed vehicles at police stations in Hurriyah in north Baghdad, and Alwiyah in the centre of the capital at about 8:30 am (0530 GMT), killing at least 15, interior and defence ministry officials said.
“I saw the bomber trying to pass the barriers, but he blew up his vehicle, the concrete T-walls collapsed and I fell on the ground,” said Ali, a policeman at the Alwiyah station who only gave his first name.
He said he was not injured thanks to the walls, but that he could not find his colleagues who were standing at the gate of the station because they were torn apart.
Human remains and shrapnel from the bomb were scattered for about 100 metres (yards) from the site of the explosion and security forces cordoned off the scene, according to an AFP correspondent.
Parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi condemened the attacks in a statement released by his office.
“These attacks are a challenge against Iraq and the political process, because the terrorists want to confirm that they exist here just before the departure of US soldiers,” said Baghdad provincial council member Mohammed al-Rubaie, who was at the scene of the Alwiyah explosion.
The official at the defence ministry put the toll for both attacks at 15 dead and 42 wounded.
The interior ministry official said the explosion in Alwiyah killed 13 people and wounded 25, while the attack in Hurriyah killed four people and wounded 23.
Rubaie confirmed that 13 were killed in the Alwiyah attack, including seven police, among them one woman. The bomber tried to enter the Alwiyah station but was blocked by concrete walls, he said.
Differing tolls are common in the confusion that follows major attacks in Iraq.
The attack seriously damaged the police station in Alwiyah and created a crater in the street about four metres (yards) across and two metres deep. It also damaged a nearby primary school.
The street in front of the police station had been closed from 2004, but was reopened about a month ago to ease the flow of traffic, Rubaie said.
Wednesday’s attacks come with less than three months to go before a year-end withdrawal deadline for the roughly 41,500 US soldiers currently in Iraq, with Baghdad and Washington yet to reach any accord on a post-2011 training mission.
Another car bomb killed three people and wounded 11, including police, at Al-Ilam in southwest Baghdad on Wednesday, defence and interior ministry officials said.
Baghdad’s Yarmuk hospital received six wounded from the explosion in Al-Ilam, among them a police major, a medical source said.
A car bomb in Hurriyah killed one civilian and wounded an Iraqi army brigadier, nine of his bodyguards and two civilians, according to the officials.
The defence ministry official said the brigadier general was seriously wounded.
In other attacks, a magnetic “sticky bomb” wounded a police brigadier general in Al-Sulaykh in north Baghdad, while two police were wounded by shots from a silenced pistol in the Jihad neighbourhood in south Baghdad, said the interior ministry official.
