56 dead and 200 wounded as bomb blasts tear through Baghdad on eve of Iraq War’s tenth anniversary

• A string of apparently coordinated blasts left scores dead or injured today
• Attacks bore signs of Al Qaeda, targeting Shiite areas around Iraqi capital
• Latest round of violence comes ten years to the day after Iraq War began
  

By Harriet Arkell

PUBLISHED: 08:07 EST, 19 March 2013 | UPDATED: 13:15 EST, 19 March 2013

Smoke rises after a car bomb attack in Sadr City, Baghdad, as a wave of apparently coordinated bombings shook the city this morning

A wave of bombings tore through Baghdad today, killing at least 56 people in a spasm of violence on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the US-led invasion.

Most of this morning's attacks involved car bombs targeted on Shiite areas, small restaurants, labourers and bus stops in the Iraqi capital and nearby towns.

The attacks show how dangerous and unstable Iraq remains a decade after the war began - a country where sectarian violence can explode at any time.

The attacks that left 56 dead and more than 200 wounded came ten years to the day after Washington announced the start of the invasion on 19 March 2003.

Meanwhile today Iraq's Cabinet decided to postpone upcoming provincial elections in two provinces dominated by the country's minority Sunnis.  Provincial elections are scheduled for April 20.

The prime minister's spokesman Ali al-Moussawi said the decision to postpone the elections for up to six months followed requests from the political blocs in the provinces.

The two provinces affected, Anbar and Ninevah, have been at the centre of nearly three-month-long protests against Iraq's Shiite-led government.

One of the deadliest of this morning's attacks struck close to one of the main gates to the heavily-fortified Green Zone, which houses major government offices and the embassies of several countries, including the United States and Britain.

That blast outside a restaurant killed six people, including two soldiers, and wounded more than 15.  Thick black smoke could be seen rising from the area as ambulances raced to the scene.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, but the attacks bore hallmarks of al Qaeda in Iraq.  The terror group favours spectacular, coordinated bombings intended to undermine public confidence in the Shiite-led government.

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This car bomb attack near the gates of the Green Zone which houses both the US and Britain's embassies, left six dead

Police and hospital officials reported most casualties from a car bombing near the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in Baghdad's eastern Qahira neighborhood at around 10am. That blast killed seven people and wounded 21.

The officials provide casualty numbers on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information to journalists.

The violence started at around 8am, when a bomb exploded outside a popular restaurant in Baghdad's Mashtal neighbourhood, killing four people and wounding 15.

Minutes later, two labourers were killed and eight were wounded when a roadside bomb hit the place where they gather every day in an area of New Baghdad.

Children inspect a bus destroyed in a car bomb attack in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, Baghdad, this morning

In the poor Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City, a bomb stuck to the underside of a minibus killed three commuters and wounded seven people.

Another car bomb exploded in a commercial street in the same area, killing two people and wounding 11, and yet another bomb struck a police patrol in the neighbourhood, killing five people and wounding 13.

Hussein Abdul-Khaliq, a government employee who lives in Sadr city, said he heard the explosion and went out to find the minibus on fire.

He said: 'We helped take some trapped women and children from outside the burning bus before the arrival of the rescue teams.

'Our clothes were covered with blood as we tried to rescue the trapped people or to move out the bodies.

'Today's attacks are new proof that the politicians and security officials are a huge failure.'

Other attacks struck the largely Shiite neighbourhoods of Hussainiyah, Zafarniyah, Shula and Utaifiya, as well as the Sunni district of Tarmiyah.

A policeman inspects the wreckage of a car bomb attack in Sadr City, one in a string of attacks that left 56 dead

Just outside the capital, a mortar shell landed near a clinic in the town of Taji, killing two people and wounding five. And about 30 miles south of Baghdad, in Iskandiriyah, a car bomb exploded near a bus stop, killing five people and wounding 20.

Tuesday's attacks came a day after insurgents killed nine people, including a bombing by a suicide attacker who killed five when he drove an explosives-laden car into a checkpoint in the central Iraqi town of Balad Ruz.

Al Qaeda's Iraq arm, which operates under the name the Islamic State of Iraq, has sought to reassert its presence in recent weeks.

Last week, the group claimed responsibility for a highly coordinated attack earlier this month in far western Iraq that killed nine Iraqis and 51 Syrian soldiers who had sought temporary refuge in the country.

And on Sunday, Al Qaeda's Iraq branch took responsibility for a brazen and highly coordinated raid on the Justice Ministry in Baghdad last week, which killed at least 24 people.  

Scores killed in wave of bombings across Baghdad ahead of 10 year...