Many casualties in Baghdad triple car bomb–police

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Three car bombs targeting a bus station
in central Baghdad caused many casualties during the Wednesday
morning rush hour, police said.

“There are many wounded and killed,” one police officer
said after two bombs went off within minutes of each other at
the bustling Nahda bus station, shortly before 8 a.m. (0400
GMT).

Moments later a third car bomb detonated nearby, close to
the Kindi hospital where some of the wounded were being taken.

Thick black smoke rose over the city and a Reuters reporter
saw blazing buses and cars and two lifeless bodies on the road.

There has been a lull for the past week or so in major
insurgent attacks in the Iraqi capital.

Leaders of rival sectarian and ethnic communities are deep
in negotiation on a new constitution and the attacks may have
been intended to send a message of defiance from the Sunni Arab
rebels opposed to the new, U.S.-backed, Shi’ite-led government.

The coordination of the bombs suggested the involvement of
Islamist radical groups like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in
Iraq, which has carried out many of the biggest suicide car
bomb attacks since the government was formed four months ago.