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By Rosalind Russell and Michael Georgy
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Suicide bombers have struck four times in Baghdad's morning rush hour, killing 34 people and wounding 224 near the Red Cross offices and police stations, in the city's bloodiest day since Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
Apparently coordinated blasts shook the city after three U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks overnight. An ambulance bomb was used in the Red Cross attack.
Iraq's police chief Ahmad Ibrahim, who is also deputy interior minister, told a news conference 26 of the 34 dead were civilians and eight police. Sixty-five police and 159 civilians were wounded. He did not say if foreigners were killed.
The explosions, sirens and smoke plunged Baghdad into fear and chaos at the outset of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The onslaught "is not only criminal, it's sacrilegious", U.S. Brigadier General Mark Hertling told reporters.
Speaking later at the news conference, Hertling said all the Monday morning attacks were suicide bombings, while a fifth had been foiled by Iraqi police. A suspect seized alive in that attack was believed to be a Syrian national, he said.
The bombings bring a new urgency to the struggle by embattled U.S.-led forces to control Iraq. On Sunday, rockets hit a fortified Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz was staying, killing a U.S. soldier and wounding 17 people. Wolfowitz was unhurt.
Monday's suicide attack at about 8.30 a.m. (5:30 a.m. British time) on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquarters in central Baghdad killed 10 to 12 people, including two Iraqi ICRC guards and eight labourers passing in a lorry, the ICRC said. Fifteen Iraqi ICRC staff were wounded.
AMBULANCE BOMB
"I saw an ambulance car coming very fast towards the barrier and it exploded," an ICRC guard said. Brigadier General Hertling said initial indications showed the vehicle had Red Cross or Red Crescent markings.
The blast blew down an outer wall and shattered windows in the ICRC building.
"We always believed we were protected by the humanitarian work we do," ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani told Reuters.
The ICRC cut its foreign staff from more than 100 to about 30 after a Sri Lankan technician was shot dead in July and after a suicide bomber devastated the U.N. headquarters in August, killing 22 people including U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
In northeast Baghdad, at least eight people died in a blast near a police station, a U.S. military policeman said. "There are eight dead, several walking wounded," Sergeant Mike Toole told Reuters at the scene in the Shaab district.
Witnesses said the attack appeared to have been a suicide bombing. "It was a Landcruiser car that was speeding towards the police station. The (guards) fired on it four times. It turned right and blew up," said local resident Mohammed Ali.
Officials at one hospital said at least 15 people had been killed in attacks on police stations in the southwestern Baya and western Khadra districts. Pools of blood lay on the hospital floor.
"I was sitting in my office and suddenly there was a loud explosion and glass flew across the room at me," said wounded police investigator Ali Tahseen of the Baya blast.
"I was taken outside behind the building and I saw a group of policemen lying wounded."
A police official said bombs had gone off near three police stations. Police had foiled another attack by killing a suspected bomber and wounding another. The official said unexploded ordnance had also been found at a fire station and a market area.
RUSH HOUR EXPLOSIONS
Hertling said ICRC guards had stopped the ambulance bomb from entering the ICRC compound, so the bomber had detonated it about 20 metres (yards) from the sandbagged entrance.
The blast dug a crater about one metre (three feet) deep and three to four metres (yards) across.
Reuters photographer Chris Helgren saw at least three bodies at the scene with their clothes blown off.
An Iraqi woman living nearby said two of her children had been wounded. "We were sleeping and the house came down on our heads," Muntaha Khalil told Reuters.
ICRC staff arriving for work broke down when they saw the havoc. Women cried hysterically.
Reuters television footage showed smoke billowing from inside the blue and white walls of the Baya police compound, and burned out vehicles in its car park. The crumpled wreckage of a car lay on a road near the Khadra police station.
Overnight, three U.S. soldiers were killed, one in a mortar attack in Abu Ghraib, in Baghdad's western outskirts, and two in a roadside bomb blast in the city, the U.S. military said.
The deaths brought to 112 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in hostilities in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1, three weeks after U.S.-led troops captured Baghdad and ousted Saddam.
The bombings brought swift condemnation from European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Nordic prime ministers meeting in Oslo.
