BAGHDAD -- Guerrillas carried out a series of deadly attacks around the Iraqi capital this morning, killing 29 people and wounding 68 others in suicide car bombings of the International Committee of the Red Cross offices and several police stations.

U.S. Army troops secure a blast site outside the Baghdad headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, October 27, 2003. It was the first time the Swiss-based relief agency, which for 140 years has sought to protect the victims of war, had been targeted by suicide bombers, although a number of officials have died in shootings and other attacks in places such as Chechnya and Afghanistan in recent years. (Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters)

The blast outside the ICRC occurred when a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed ambulance into a cement barrier claiming the lives of 12 Iraqis, while another 17 people were killed in near-simultaneous attacks at five police stations around Baghdad.

Hospitals put the overall number of wounded at 58, on top of 10 soldiers reported hurt by the US army, in the second day of high-profile attacks in the war-scarred capital.

The bombings, which shrouded the Baghdad skyline in smoke, were an ominous start for the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan as the anti-US insurgents escalated their campaign from bleeding the coalition with ambushes to apparently orchestrating mass terror.

Iraq's deputy interior minister, Ahmed Ibrahim, blamed fallen dictator Saddam Hussein for the bombings, which came a day after rockets pounded a hotel in the coalition's heavily guarded Baghdad complex in an attack which killed one US soldier and wounding 17.

"Saddam Hussein is behind all the disasters that are happening in Iraq," he charged.

Others, including US officials, also pointed to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

In another blow, three US soldiers were killed and four wounded late Sunday night around the capital in two attacks that raised the US military's number of dead to 112 since official combat was declared over on May 1.

The pin-prick attacks, a mortar strike on Abu Gharib prison and a roadside bombing, came hours before a loud explosion rattled Baghdad just short of 8:30 am (0530 GMT) Monday, ushering in more than 60 minutes of thundering booms around Baghdad.

First an Iraqi hospital ambulance rammed into a barricade in front of the ICRC building, bursting into flames and sending a thick black cloud of smoke over the city.

"An Iraqi hospital ambulance sped toward us. I waved my arms to stop it. It barreled into the barrier blocking the headquarters and burst into flames," said ICRC guard Saba Ali Ihsan.

"The driver died and my colleague was wounded."

Burnt out vehicles smoldered on the street. The bombed-out ambulance was a twisted heap of metal and glass shards scattered on the ground, as people screamed for those gone missing inside the ICRC building, while the wounded, streaming blood from head wounds, wandered aimlessly.

At the Ibn Nafiz hospital and morgue, at least 12 bodies were laid out.

"The bodies were burnt or badly maimed," said AFP photographer Marwan Naamani, who was at the morgue and counted eight corpses.

But the assault on the ICRC was not the only tragedy.

U.S. Army soldiers walks through the debris of the Bayaa police station in Baghdad, in the western part of the city, Monday, Oct 27, 2003. A car bomb exploded outside this police station, leaving at least three Iraqis dead and several injured. Car bombers struck the International Red Cross headquarters and four police stations across Baghdad on Monday, killing almost 40 people, police and U.S. military reported. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Within minutes of the first bombing, a police station in Baghdad's Karkh neighborhood was ripped by a massive car bomb explosion.

At least 13 people, including three policemen, were killed and 10 US soldiers wounded at the Al-Elam police station when a white car exploded at 8:30 am, said policemen and a US soldier.

"We found many pieces of my colleagues on the ground," policeman Abdel Zahar Salim told AFP by the station, as flesh still scattered the asphalt.

The car crashed into the station's parking lot and burst into flames as 40 policemen gathered to start work.

The flames swept up four American military vehicles and 36 police cars which burned in the parking lot.

One policeman was killed at the Al-Khadra police station in southern Baghdad when a car laden with explosives rammed into the building at 9:45 am (0645 GMT), said police officer Jawad Kazem.

Three civilians were also killed and four Iraqi policemen were wounded in the attack, US army Lieutenant Colonel Eric Nanz told AFP.

At the same moment, seven or eight were wounded when a suicide car bomber struck the Al-Shab police station, said a witness, a police captain and a doctor at Baghdad's neurology hospital.

At Al-Shab, the suicide-bomb car rammed into a neighboring building when police opened a round of fire at the speeding vehicle, an officer said at the scene.

A policeman said the station had earlier received a letter that it would be attacked.

A fourth station in Al-Shwala was also hit by a car bomb, a police officer said.

At a fifth police station, in Jadriya, Iraqi police shot dead the driver of an explosives-packed car hurtling toward the station, a US military officer said on condition of anonymity.

Earlier, a top US military officer reported two explosions in Baghdad, one by the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross and another by the health ministry.

But a visit to the health ministry area by AFP revealed there were no signs of any attack.

Copyright 2003 AFP

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