IRAQ: Two suicide bombers killed at least 77 people and destroyed two Shia mosques in an Iraqi town yesterday, in an attack aimed at fuelling sectarian tension before next month's elections.
The bombers walked into the mosques in Khanaqin when they were full for Friday noon prayers, and detonated explosive belts strapped to their waists. Many children were feared dead as a number of fathers had taken their sons for prayer. Bodies were still trapped in the wreckage last night. Kamaran Ahmed, director of the town's hospital, said 77 people had been confirmed killed and 80 wounded. Many bodies were too badly mutilated to identify.
Earlier yesterday, two suicide car bombers targeted a Baghdad hotel used by foreign contractors and the press, killing six people including two children. Protective walls appear to have prevented the Hamra hotel from being destroyed, but a nearby block of flats collapsed after the blast. Security camera footage showed a white van driving up to the concrete wall and then detonating. Seconds later another explosion knocked out the camera. The attack appeared to be aimed at blowing a hole in the defences through which the second vehicle would reach the hotel.
"Instead, what happened is both trucks blew up right here and did tremendous damage to this apartment building, wounding scores of innocent people," US Col Ed Cardon told reporters on the scene. At least 40 people were wounded.
In striking Khanaqin, on the border with Iran, the insurgents demonstrated the length of their reach. And by targeting civilians in a mainly Shia and Kurdish town, the Sunni-led insurgency appeared to be seeking to deepen sectarian wounds ahead of elections due on December 15th.
Tensions are already high following the Iraqi government's admission that a number of mostly Sunni detainees had been tortured in an interior ministry prison, near the Hamra hotel. The head of the UN's human rights department, Louise Arbour, called yesterday for an international inquiry into Iraqi jails in the wake of the scandal.
Washington and London are hoping the December elections will help to bring greater stability, facilitating significant troop withdrawals next year. But yesterday's attacks show the insurgency still threatens to tip the country into civil war.
As the post-invasion death toll rises and disputes continue over the justification for the war, the political struggle in Washington is reaching new levels of intensity. The White House sought to play down a call for an immediate start to the withdrawal from John Murtha, a prominent Democrat congressman who had initially supported the invasion.
The administration spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Mr Murtha had joined the "extreme liberal wing" of the Democratic Party and sought to compare him to Michael Moore, the radical liberal film-maker.
However, Mr Murtha is a Vietnam veteran with close links to the armed forces. Vice-President Dick Cheney went out of his way to praise him last year for his "bipartisan" co-operation. In an emotional statement on Thursday, Mr Murtha hit out at Mr Cheney, deriding his hardline stance on the war and pointing out that the vice-president had avoided military service at the time of the Vietnam conflict.
Most mainstream Democrats do not back Mr Murtha's bill calling for a rapid withdrawal over six months, but they have called for a timetable for bringing US troops home. That proposal was defeated by the Republican majority in Congress, but legislators called for greater accountability from the White House for the conduct of the counter-insurgency.
President George Bush got an unwelcome surprise yesterday in South Korea, where he was attending a Pacific rim summit in the port of Pusan. Without informing its US counterpart, Seoul's defence ministry released a plan for the withdrawal of a third of the country's 3,200 troops in Iraq - the third largest foreign contingent - in the first half of next year.
A ministry spokesman said the troop reduction had been ordered as there had been "so far considerable progress in reconstructing Iraq". Asked why Mr Bush had not been told of the plan, foreign minister Ban Ki-moon said no final decision had been taken, and that parliament would review the "very sensitive" issue.