Two suicide car bombers attacked a police station Sunday in western Baghdad, killing at least 13 people and wounding 82, police said.
The bombs exploded as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki arrived in Cairo on the first stop of a four-nation regional tour aimed at winning Arab support for his embattled government.
The first driver raced through a police checkpoint guarding the station and exploded his vehicle just outside the two-story building, police said. Moments later, a second suicide car bomber aimed at the checkpoint's concrete barriers and exploded just outside them, police said.
The blasts collapsed nearby buildings, smashing windows and burying at least four cars under piles of concrete. Metal roofs were peeled back by the force of the explosions. Pools of blood made red mud of a dusty driveway.
An unidentified man with wounds to one eye and his hands staggered through the wreckage.
"All our belongings and money were smashed and are gone. What kind of life is this? Where is the government?" he exclaimed. "There are no jobs, and things are very bad. Is this fair?"
Iraqi police stations often are the target of attacks by insurgents who accuse the officers of betraying Iraq by working in cooperation with its U.S.-backed Shiite government and the American military.
The blasts occurred at about 10 a.m. in Baiyaa, a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of western Baghdad, a policeman said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
He said 13 people died — five policemen and eight civilians — and that 82 were wounded: 46 policemen and 36 civilians.
The casualty toll could rise as rescue workers sifted through rubble for more victims. Thick black smoke billowed up into the sky and ambulances raced to the location with sirens wailing.
The bombings in Baiyaa also damaged homes and car service centers near the police station.
At least two mechanics working nearby were wounded by flying shrapnel and debris.
"I was thrown outside my shop by the huge blast, and I saw my colleague in the shop next to me lying on the ground motionless, with pool of blood beneath him," said Anmar Abdul Hadi, 20.
Another victim spoke by phone from a gurney at Yarmouk Hospital, where the wounded were taken.
"I was cleaning a car at the garage where I work when suddenly an explosion took place and knocked me over," said Hussein Rahim, 22, who was wounded in the arm.
Another car repairman, 25-year-old Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, said: "I heard two explosions and was thrown near the car I was working on. Smoke filled the area and I couldn't see my fellow workers at first." He suffered a shoulder wound.
In addition to Baiyaa police officers, the station had been serving as the temporary headquarters for police from Dora, a neighborhood in southern Baghdad. Last month, a suicide truck bomber demolished the Dora station, killing at least 11 people.
In Other Developments:
Two U.S. soldiers were killed and five wounded in two separate attacks in Baghdad, and another American service member died of a non-battle-related cause, the military said Sunday. One soldier died and two were wounded in a rocket or mortar attack on their base southwest of Baghdad on Saturday night. During the day Saturday, one Army soldier was killed and three were wounded when a U.S. combat security patrol was attacked with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in a western section of the Iraqi capital, the military said. A soldier in Baghdad also died that day of an unidentified non-battle-related cause that was being investigated, the statement said. The identities of the soldiers were withheld pending notification of their relatives. Iraqi police have beaten detainees to extract information from them, without telling American security forces who may later take custody of them, The New York Times reported Sunday. It quoted one Iraqi police captain referring to a suspect who was apparently whipped with electrical cables, "I prepared him for the Americans and let them take his confession. ... We know how to make them talk. We know their back streets. We beat them. I don't beat them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and it makes him desperate." Beating of prisoners is forbidden by the U.S. Army's Field Manual, and American officers condemned the practice when they learned of it. The revelations of abuse and torture by U.S forces and contractors at Abu Ghraib prison made U.S. servicemembers even more vulnerable to local hostility. On Sunday, a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party was gunned down near his house in Fallujah, police said. Morgue officials said three bodies were found floating in the Tigris river in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad. The bodies were blindfolded with the hands bound, and gunshots in the head and chest, said morgue official Maamoun al-Ajili. In Basra, Iraq's second largest-city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, the British military said a suspect accused of attacks on British and Iraqi troops in the area was killed in a raid. Two of the man's brothers were arrested, a spokeswoman said. Details emerged Sunday about a mortar attack the day before inside Baghdad's U.S.-guarded Green Zone. A spokesman for Ahmed Chalabi, who runs the Supreme National Commission for de-Baathification, said a mortar round landed on Chalabi's office, which was empty at the time. No one was harmed.
Residents of Baghdad have reacted angrily to a wall being built by U.S. troops around the Sunni enclave of Azamiyah in Baghdad. The concrete wall, including barriers as tall as 12 feet, is part of a new strategy aimed at breaking the cycle of sectarian violence. But one resident claimed the wall polarized communities, isolating areas and thereby agitating sectarian fighting. Another resident, Adnan Shuhab, said such walls could previously be seen only between Israel and Palestinians: "We are Iraqis and we have been unified for thousands of years. They want to differentiate between the citizens of Azamiyah and Sadr city and Sadoun." When the wall is finished, the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, on the eastern side of the Tigris River, will be gated, and traffic control points, manned by Iraqi soldiers, will be the only entries, the U.S. military said. The US 407th Brigade Support Battalion began the project on April 10 and was working "almost nightly until the wall is complete," the statement continued. A top U.S. general said Sunday that American forces had no technology capable of detecting all suicide bombers before they strike. Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training Iraqi troops, said the only solution is for Iraqi forces, government officials and civilians to work together to stop the terrorist cells that plan such attacks. "The unfortunate reality of suicide bombers is that there is no ... magic formula for solving that problem," Dempsey told reporters in Baghdad's Green Zone.Al-Maliki's trip came at a precarious time for his regime. He suffered a blow last week when six Cabinet ministers allied to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr quit the government, to protest the prime minister's failure to back calls for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Al-Maliki is expected to name replacements in the coming days.
On Sunday, al-Maliki was received by his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Nazif, and was scheduled to meet later in the day with President Hosni Mubarak and the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa.
The meetings come just 10 days before two conferences on Iraq are to be held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik. They will be attended by Iraq's neighbors as well as Bahrain and Egypt, and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, as well as other developed countries.
After Egypt, al-Maliki is scheduled to visit Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.