BAGHDAD, Iraq – The coordinated detonation of two bombs during the after-school rush at a Baghdad university killed at least 60 people Tuesday and wounded more than 140 others in what university officials described as one of the deadliest attacks on academia since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The spate of killing, which included another bombing outside a Sunni shrine in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of central Baghdad, made plain the difficulties facing the U.S. and Iraqi troops poised for their latest effort to tamp down Baghdad’s rampant violence. It coincided with a report from the United Nations that said more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died violently last year, an average of 94 per day – an estimate more than double the death toll provided by the Iraqi government.
The killings were driven by strife between Sunni and Shiite militants, said Gianni Magazzeni, the chief of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, and “without significant progress in the rule of law, sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control.”
At al-Mustansiriya University, sophomore Dyana Ayad had finished her Arabic elocution test when she walked through the college gardens, turned right toward the overpass and joined a crowd of students waiting for buses. The pressure filled her ears a split second before she heard the sound of the bomb.
“I saw unbelievable things,” the 20-year-old said Tuesday night. “There were tiny pieces of papers, burned papers everywhere. And dark smoke, white smoke. … I saw arms, legs, body parts flying in the air. The sky was raining burning paper and body parts.”
Firefighters and police sped to the scene of the wreckage, near Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, dowsed the flaming cars and buses, and ferried bloodied students to hospitals throughout the city. Students ran in panic to find their friends, witnesses said, picking through what one student called “pieces of meat.”
The university’s assistant president, Fadhil al-Amri, found a human head on the ground outside his office, next to a severed hand.
“No matter what I say to you, it is nothing like what happened. It is terrible,” Amri said. “The terrorists are walking the streets in larger numbers than the policemen or the soldiers in the army. They can’t do anything. There is no safety in this country.”
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