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Fatalities From Iraqi Market Bombings Reach 98

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By ALISSA J. RUBIN, The New York Times

Published: February 3, 2008

BAGHDAD - Iraqi officials on Saturday raised the death toll from Friday's pet market bombings as more bodies were found and as badly injured people died from their wounds, bringing the total to 98 dead and 123 injured, according to the Interior Ministry.

A stream of cars carrying simple wooden coffins traveled to the southern city of Najaf, where those who are Shiite are usually buried, as Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki and other high-ranking Iraqis sought to reassure Iraqis of their commitment to fighting the scourge.

Using language similar to that employed by Western leaders in the wake of terrorist attacks, Gen. Aboud Qanbar, who leads Fard al Qanoon, the law enforcement plan for Baghdad, described those who organized the bombing as increasingly desperate, without religious faith and as killing "only to prove that they are here."

Qanbar said the only way to defeat such attacks was to have more tactics to detect and stop terrorists than terrorists have to elude them.

Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the commander of U.S. troops in Baghdad, said there were indications the two women who carried out Friday's attacks were mentally impaired. The military did not provide any details on how they knew the condition of the women.

"It appears the suicide bombers were not willing martyrs, they were used by al-Qaida for these horrific attacks," Hammond told reporters, referring to al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, a largely homegrown group that U.S. intelligence officials say is foreign-led.

This confirms similar reports on Friday from Iraqi security forces.

Al-Qaida in Mesopotamia and its affiliate groups, who are blamed by the U.S. military for most large-scale suicide bombings, has recently used women wearing suicide vests and, in at least one case, a young teenager to carry out strikes since the U.S. and Iraqi forces put up more concrete walls and checkpoints, which made car bombings more difficult to carry out.

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