The
bombs were
exploded as
students and
staff
left the
university [AFP]
Nuri
al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has said
"terrorists and Saddamists" were
behind the bombing at al-Mustansiriya
University.
At
least 65 people were killed when a car
and a suicide bomber exploded outside the
University on Tuesday.
More
than 100 people were injured in the blast,
mostly students and staff leaving the
university.
Al-Maliki
said: "They [those responsible] carried
out an ugly crime against humanity targeting
the innocent students of Al-Mustansiriya
University."
An
official at the university said: "The
majority of those killed [in the explosion]
are female students who were on their way
home."
Al-Maliki
promised to punish those behind the bombing and
linked it to the execution on Monday of
Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's halfbrother
and a former intelligence chief, and Awad
Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's
Revolutionary Court.
In
a statement released on Tuesday, he said:
"When the Iraqi people turned a black
page of injustice and dictatorship by giving
fair punishment for criminals and mass
killers, a desperate group of terrorists and
Saddamists targeted an educational
center."
The
university blast was the fourth bomb attack in
Baghdad in the space of a day, following
earlier attacks on police and near a Sunni
mosque in the Iraqi capital.
In
other violence, at least 45 people died in a
series of attacks around the capital earlier
on Tuesday.
Suicide
bomber at university gates
A
police source said that the car bomb exploded
near the main gate of the university in an
area where students wait for minibuses and
cars to pick them up to go home.
The
suicide bomber then blew himself up near a
second gate as people fled.
Hoda
Abdel Hamid, Al Jazeera's Iraq correspondent,
said: "The university is in a
neighbourhood that used to be a mixed
neighbourhood, but now it is a Shia
neighbourhood ... and some people have said
that the university is controlled by the al-Mahdi
army."
The
university official said that classes had been
cancelled for two days after the attack.
"There
is no way people could sit and study. There's
glass everywhere and the doors were blown
out," the official said.
Police
also reported a drive-by shooting in a market
in the city's northern al-Bounuk district that
killed 10 people and wounded seven.
The
US military reported that four US soldiers
were killed on Monday by a roadside bomb in
northwestern Iraq.
Gulf
states back US
The
mounting death toll in Iraq comes as foreign
ministers from six Gulf Arab states, as well
as from Egypt and Jordan, met with Condoleezza
Rice, US Secretary of State, in Kuwait.
"Bush's
strategy has failed totally in Iraq
and USA has already lost the war. The
new plan will not work; it will only
bring more deaths and make things in
Iraq worse..."
Rice
is on a regional tour to build support for the
commitment by George Bush, the US president,
to send 20,000 extra US troops to Iraq.
"We
expressed our desire to see the president's
plan to reinforce American military presence
in Baghdad as a vehicle... to stabilise
Baghdad and prevent Iraq sliding into this
ugly war, this civil war," said SheikhMohammad al-Salem al-Sabah,
the Kuwaiti foreign minister, at a joint news
conference with Rice.
The
US has already won Saudi Arabia's backing for
the plan, but the Gulf state said the plan's
success depended on Baghdad tackling sectarian
strife driving the country towards civil war.
Prince
Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign Minister,
said: "We agree fully with the goals set
by the new strategy, which in our view are the
goals that - if implemented - would solve the
problems that face Iraq."
He
also said: "Implementation [of the
strategy] requires a positive response by the
Iraqis themselves... Other countries can help,
but the main responsibility in taking
decisions rests on the Iraqis."
UN
reports on civilian deaths
Meanwhile,
the UN reported that more than 34,000
civilians have been killed in violence in Iraq
in the last year.
The
UN human rights chief in Iraq said that 34,452
civilians had been killed and more than 36,885
wounded in 2006.
More
than 100 people were hurt
outside the
university [AFP]
The
day's earlier attacks included a blast from a
motorcycle rigged with explosives that left 15
dead and 70 people wounded near a Sunni mosque
in central Baghdad, an interior ministry
source said.
A
roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed
two policemen and two civilians and wounded
10, including three policemen, in Karrada in
central Baghdad.
Six
people died and 11 were wounded by a bomb
inside a car in Sadr City, a Shia district in
eastern Baghdad, an interior ministry source
said.
And
a sniper killed a guard of al-Sabah, a state
run newspaper, in northern Baghdad, police
said.
The
attacks came ahead of a security crackdown in
the capital which Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi
prime minister, has said will be free of
political interference.
"The
security plan will be away from political
interference and will crack down on
outlaws," al-Maliki said during a meeting
with the United Nations representative in Iraq
Ashraf Qazi.
"Those
who do not want to be chased by the military
should abide by the law," he said.
