A minibus packed with explosives blew up near a police station and a market north of Baghdad yesterday, killing more than 70 people and wounding about 30 in the worst attacks since the handover of power exactly one month ago. 

The powerful suicide bomb left a sea of destruction, obliterating market stalls and destroying several buildings.

It raises fears of a fresh campaign by insurgents just days before Iraq holds a major political conference to plot its national future.

It was the worst death toll from a single bomb attack in Iraq since a blast outside a mosque in the holy city of Najaf last August killed more than 80 people.

Television pictures showed at least a dozen bodies scattered across a street, some of them still on fire.

A severely wounded man, his clothes burnt and torn and his body covered in blood, sat amongst smoldering ruins with several dead lying near him. Some appeared to be children.

A Health Ministry official said 68 people were killed and 30 wounded in the blast shortly after 10 am (0600 GMT) in Baquba, an often violent town 65 kilometers north of Baghdad.

He said the toll could rise, with many of those injured having received shrapnel wounds to the chest.

Twenty-one people traveling in a minibus alongside the one that detonated were killed, an Interior Ministry source said.

It was the deadliest day in Iraq since June 24, when more than 100 people were killed in a string of bomb blasts, suicide attacks and armed assaults across the country.

The explosion also came a month to the day after the interim government took back sovereignty, and three days before a major political assemblage to chart Iraq's future. There were several other incidents across the country yesterday, creating the impression of a coordinated offensive.

A mortar or rocket struck a busy street in Baghdad, killing one person and wounding five, witnesses said.

In South of Baghdad, seven members of Iraq's security forces, backed by US and Ukrainian troops, died in a gun battle in which 35 insurgents were killed, Poland's Defence Ministry said.

No US or Ukrainian forces were wounded or killed.

Sea of destruction

As well as tearing through scores of civilians as they shopped at the market, the Baquba bomb struck a group of men lining up at a nearby Iraqi police recruiting office.

"We had gathered them at one place to register their names. There was a queue, when suddenly this vehicle appeared and exploded," said a police officer at the scene.

Firefighters arrived to douse the flames, sometimes having to point their hoses at still burning bodies.

"God bless them, what have they done?" shouted one man, referring to the victims.

Baquba, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite town, is home to many former members of the Iraqi army and has experienced frequent car bombings and suicide attacks during the past year.

Many of those have targeted Iraq's police and National Guard, who guerrillas regard as collaborating with US and other foreign troops stationed in Iraq.

The violence comes three days before Iraq is due to convene a national parley in which 1,000 delegates will gather in Baghdad to weigh the country's future and elect a 100-member National Council to oversee the interim government.

The event is billed as a crucial next step in Iraq's transition to democracy ahead of elections planned for January, but there are security concerns, particularly with so many people converging on the capital.

US troops and Iraqi security forces have been planning the security for weeks and are particularly concerned about suicide car bomb attacks like one that assassinated the former head of the Iraqi Governing Council earlier this year.

(China Daily July 29, 2004)