Bombs Kill 54 and Wound 123 in Baghdad

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MOHAMMED OBAIDI

BAGHDAD — Two bombs struck a bustling shopping district in the heart of Baghdad on Thursday evening, turning display windows and cabinets and glass shelves into deadly shrapnel, and killing 54 people and wounding 123, the Iraqi authorities said.

The attack, in the Karada neighborhood, was the worst here in the capital since early February, when bombings killed almost 100 people at two pet markets, and it reinforced fears that insurgents could still carry out devastating attacks in well-guarded areas. While violence has declined sharply from last year, bomb attacks in Baghdad have increased in recent weeks.

No one claimed responsibility. But the attackers used an old tactic to maximize casualties: detonating one bomb, then setting off a second blast to kill passers-by and emergency workers who rushed to the scene to aid the victims.

A shoe salesman who would identify himself only by his first name, Hatam, said the first bomb slammed him to the ground. He got up, looked behind him, and ran to aid a woman whose leg had been ripped off by the blast.

“We managed to drag her away from the spot, and then the police came really quickly, and they were shouting at the people to move back because there might be another explosion,” he said. “But the people didn’t listen, and even some of the policemen who were already there didn’t pay attention, and that is when the second explosion happened.”

This time, Hatam said, he walked away. “I couldn’t go back again,” he said. “The scene was so horrible, and I lost the energy to see dead people.”

The explosions sprayed chunks of human flesh for 50 yards. The second bomb, about 10 minutes after the first, killed more people. A number of Iraqi soldiers and police officers who hurried in after the first attack were among the dead and wounded.

Some witnesses said the first bomb had been hidden in a trash can. The second explosion may have originated in a vest worn by a suicide bomber, the American military said. One witness said a man on a motorcycle carried the bomb into the crowd. But other witnesses interviewed later said the second bomb had been planted previously.

In the chaos that followed the attacks, Iraqi security forces fired Kalashnikov rifles into the air to scare people away. But many people pushed forward anyway to search for family members feared dead.

The attack “was like an electric shock, it happened so suddenly nobody could avoid it,” said Abu Abdullah, who operates a kebab stand nearby. “Some people were burning, and I saw some without legs.”

In other violence reported Thursday, insurgents struck in the north, Iraqi authorities in Mosul said, killing one guard and wounding another at Badoosh Prison with an improvised bomb. The bodies of four guards who were kidnapped Wednesday were found Thursday.

On the political front, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, refused to proceed with the execution of the man known as Chemical Ali, one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen, in what seemed to be an effort to press other top Iraqi leaders to ratify the death sentences of two other former military commanders.

Chemical Ali, whose real name is Ali Hassan al-Majid, commanded the brutal Anfal campaign in the late 1980s that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds. He was sentenced to death last summer, and Iraq’s three-member Presidency Council, which has the constitutional power to ratify death sentences, approved his punishment last week.

Now, Mr. Maliki is arguing that Mr. Majid should not be sent to the gallows unless the American military also hands over for execution two other former military commanders who were sentenced to death at the same time.

One of the men, Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Jabouri al-Tai, was a former defense minister and general who remains a hero to many Sunni Arabs. Some Iraqi leaders and American commanders question the appropriateness of his sentence and fear that executing him would anger Sunnis already wary of the Iraqi government, which is dominated by Kurds and Shiites. But many Shiites say he deserves to be executed and that sparing him would set a dangerous precedent.

The other condemned man is Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, a former senior Iraqi armed forces commander.

The Presidency Council — President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni; and Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite — has refused to ratify the execution of Mr. Hashem. Mr. Talabani and Mr. Hashemi have said they do not approve of his sentence.

The American military, which holds all three of the condemned prisoners, is unlikely to transfer custody until the issue is resolved with the Presidency Council.

But Mr. Maliki contends that the council’s power to ratify executions does not extend to sentences on members of Saddam Hussein’s former government that were handed down by the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that tried Mr. Hussein and his top lieutenants, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman.

“The prime minister feels the Presidency Council has no power to reduce the sentence or give any amnesty to the convicted persons, so it is not necessary for them to approve this verdict,” Mr. Dabbagh said. “That is why the prime minister feels the execution cannot be done unless the other two are also handed over.”

It remains unclear how long this latest twist could leave the fates of all three in limbo. Mr. Dabbagh suggested that Mr. Maliki was not interested in any political deal to resolve the conflict with the council. “There is no compromise on this,” he said.

A senior American military spokesman in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, said Wednesday that the Iraqi government had not presented the Americans “with a request yet for the release of Majid” into Iraqi custody. “We will fulfill our responsibility once that request has been submitted to us,” he said.

Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Mosul.