The three car bombings and two other attacks, targeting the neighborhoods of key government buildings, marked the worst assault since a series of blasts killed more than 150 people in October and the third large-scale strike since August. The Iraqi Health Ministry said more than 500 people were injured Tuesday, while police said one of their patrols was hit and that at least two of the blasts were from suicide bombers. One, driving an explosives-laden ambulance, attacked the new Finance Ministry building -- the old one was was blown up in August -- and another attacked an appeals court building, the Associated Press reported.
The bombings came the same day Iraq's presidential council said national elections would take place March 6, seven weeks later than planned but a harder date than many Iraqis expected last week. U.S. and United Nations diplomats over the weekend brokered an agreement among Iraq's three main sectarian groups that they hope will allow the first national parliamentary vote since 2005.
Politicians from all sides were quick to blame rival factions for Tuesday's attacks. Kurds, Sunni Muslims and even some Shiites denounced the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for failing to protect Iraqis. The government, in turn, blamed its usual suspects: ex-Baathist members of Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaida in Iraq.
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Iraqi soldiers at the site of one of the five car bombs that rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 118.
"These bloody bombings aim to undermine the political process, especially the elections process," Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite lawmaker close to Maliki, told the AP.
Though violence in Iraq has significantly diminished from the peak of the insurgency, militants' ability to stage multi-pronged attacks at the heart of the government remains by far the most dominant political concern.
"The parliament today is so angry toward the security services which we feel have failed to prevent these attacks ... We all feel -- and all the world feels -- that the Iraqi people are fed up of sufferings and something should be done to stop this," Mohammed Shareef Ahmed, a Kurdish parliament member, told the AP. He was among several lawmakers demanding a full-scale inquiry.
Ahmed Jabbar, a victim who was staggering through debris near the Finance Ministry building, an area nominally protected by police checkpoints, spoke for many Iraqis when he told the AP: "What crime have we committed? Children and women were buried under debris. Why did they (Iraqi troops) let this car bomb pass!"
