A girl crying in a hospital after she was wounded in a suicide bomb attack inside a bus in Baghdad yesterday. (REUTERS)

THREE MORE US SOLDIERS DIE; bUSH REVIEWS STRATEGY WITH TOP COMMANDERS, ADVISERS

baghdad • Bombers killed at least 24 people in two attacks on Iraqi families shopping yesterday for Eid Al Fitr, in a deadly response to an appeal for peace from religious leaders.

As night fell, five bicycle bombs exploded in a crowded market just as families shopped for food for the traditional evening meal held during Ramadan, a defence ministry spokesman said. At least 20 people were killed and 30 more wounded in the attack in Mahmudiyah, 30km south-west of the capital, in one of the bloodiest attacks of its type in recent weeks.

In an earlier blast, a suicide attacker detonated a bomb on board a bus returning from one of Baghdad’s largest markets, killing four people and wounding 15, mainly women and children headed home with shopping. The attacks came as US military casualties continued to mount — three more marines were reported dead — and as Shi’ite militias skirmished with Iraqi police in at least two southern cities.

Meanwhile, US President George Bush met with his top military commanders and advisers to mull over their strategy in Iraq. “The last few weeks have been rough for our troops in Iraq, and for the Iraqi people," Bush said in his weekly radio address. “The fighting is difficult, but our nation has seen difficult fights before.”

Children’s clothes and toys were scattered across a bridge over the Tigris that runs from one of Baghdad’s biggest public markets, crammed with families preparing for Eid. “Is this the Makkah document? Killing children and those buying toys for them?” roared Abu Sajad, a stocky white-bearded man in his 50s at the scene. “The holidays are the only days now when children are happy.”

He was referring to a meeting in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, of 29 religious leaders from bitterly divided Sunni and Shi’ite sects that was aimed at staunching the bloody sectarian violence in Iraq. They urged Iraqis not to shed Muslim blood and called on them to “join ranks with a view to the independence of Iraq and its territorial integrity”. The text included calls to safeguard the “goods, blood and honour of Muslims”, to free innocent people who have been abducted, and to “allow displaced people to return to their place of origin”.

The Makkah meeting, held under the auspices of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, was just the latest of many calls by the country’s leaders for an end to internecine killing. Nevertheless, many Iraqis clung to the hope that the prestigious and sacred site of the meeting would have an impact.

But Baghdad bookstore owner Emad Abdel Hussein, 35, noted that it would not work unless the warring parties themselves want stability. “I doubt it will be implemented any time soon unless some sort of active implementation measure is provided,” he said.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad applauded Iraq’s leaders for the conference but also emphasised the key was implementation. “I urge Iraqi leaders to respond to this moral compact by doing everything possible to stop the killing of the innocent,” he said. “Iraqis have suffered enough.”

A few hours after the bus bomb, a second blast near the health ministry killed one person and wounded three. Iraq’s mixed provinces, such as Baghdad, Diyala and Kirkuk, have been swept by violence as gunmen from rival communities target civilians and leave piles of corpses in city streets.

In Diyala province alone, 9,000 people have been killed since the fall of the old regime in March 2003 and at least 30,000 displaced — most of them Shi’ites, said the provincial police commander. Police in the province found six more bodies of dead people, including three without heads.

In Amara, government envoys negotiated a ceasefire after two days of deadly clashes between police and Shi’ite militiamen left two dozen dead. Interior Minister Jawad Bolani met with Muqtada Al Sadr, one of the most powerful militia leaders in the country, and praised him for his efforts to end the Amara clashes.

Sectarian differences were exacerbated when parliament adopted a Shiite-backed law this week allowing provinces in the Shi’ite and oil-rich south to establish an autonomous region like the Kurdish one in the north. Sunni Arabs and some Shi’ites opposed the law, arguing that federalism would lead to breakup of Iraq.

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