35 killed in Baghdad bombings

A US general pointed an early finger of suspicion at foreign fighters for four suicide bombings that killed 35 people and wounded 230 yesterday in Baghdad's bloodiest day since Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

US President George W. Bush, campaigning for re-election next year amid mounting criticism over his Iraq policy, vowed not to retreat after the attackers drove a bomb-laden ambulance at the Red Cross headquarters and struck three police stations.

The apparently coordinated morning rush-hour bombings followed the killing of three US troops overnight and the death of another in a rocket attack on Sunday on a Baghdad hotel where US Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz was staying.

"There are indicators that certainly these attacks have a mode of operation of foreign fighters," said Brigadier General Mark Hertling of the US Army's 1st Armored Division, adding one captured attacker had a Syrian passport.

"He's a foreign fighter. He had a Syrian passport and the policemen claim that as he was shot and fell that he said he was Syrian," Brigadier General Hertling said, adding the timing of the bombings at the start of Ramadan was "not only criminal, it's sacrilegious".

Brigadier General Hertling said suicide attacks were not typical of Saddam supporters, blamed by Washington for many raids on its troops and other targets since the Iraqi leader was toppled in April.

Washington, which has lost 113 troops to hostile fire since Bush declared major combat over on May 1, has made increasing mention of the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq, including members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

Mr Bush has been under pressure to stabilise Iraq so the costs of its reconstruction can be powered by its vast oil reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia. He has urged more countries to contribute troops, but heavyweight states such as Russia, France and Germany have not offered any.

Before the bloodshed on Sunday and yesterday, Washington had hailed an international donors' conference on Iraq last week as a success and eased some security restrictions on travel in Baghdad at the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

"It's in the national interest of the United States that a peaceful Iraq emerge and we will stay the course in order to achieve this objective," Bush said after a meeting at the White House with the US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday Washington had not expected the security problems in Iraq would have been quite as intense for so long.

The explosions, sirens and smoke from yesterday's attacks plunged Baghdad into fear and chaos.

Iraq's police chief, Ahmad Ibrahim, told a news conference 26 of the 35 dead were civilians and eight were police. Sixty-five police and 159 civilians had been wounded, he said.

The attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquarters killed 10 to 12 people, including two Iraqi ICRC guards, the ICRC said. Fifteen Iraqi ICRC staff were hurt.

"I saw an ambulance car coming very fast towards the barrier and it exploded," an ICRC guard said. Brigadier General Hertling said initial indications showed it had Red Cross or Red Crescent markings.

The blast wrecked an outer wall, shattered windows in the ICRC building and created a crater a metre deep and three to four metres wide.

The attack was the first of its kind on the ICRC, whose avowed mission is to help victims of war and never take sides.

"We always believed we were protected by the humanitarian work we do," ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani told Reuters.

The ICRC cut its foreign staff from more than 100 to about 30 after a Sri Lankan technician was shot dead in July and a suicide attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad in August killed 22 people, including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

In northeast Baghdad, at least eight people were killed in a blast near a police station, a US military policeman said.

"It was a Landcruiser car that was speeding towards the police station. The (guards) fired on it four times. It turned right and blew up," said local resident Mohammed Ali.