BAGHDAD — For the second time in two months, synchronized suicide car bombings struck at the heart of the Iraqi government, severely damaging the Justice Ministry and Provincial Council complexes in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 132 people and raising fresh questions about the government’s ability to secure its most vital operations.
The bombers apparently passed through multiple security checkpoints before detonating their vehicles within a minute of each other, leaving the dead and more than 520 wounded strewn across a busy downtown district. Blast walls had been moved back off the road from in front of both buildings in recent weeks.
It was the deadliest coordinated attack in Iraq since the summer of 2007 and happened just blocks from where car bombers killed at least 122 people at the Foreign and Finance ministries this August.
The attacks came as the American military prepares to withdraw in large numbers — from about 120,000 troops today to some 50,000 by the end of next July, with almost all gone by the end of 2011. Iraq is also readying for national elections in January.
For months, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who is seeking another term in office, has made painstaking efforts to present Iraq as having turned a corner on the violence that threatened to tear the country apart in 2006 and 2007.
He has recently ordered blast walls removed from dozens of streets in the capital and has insisted that Iraqi forces are capable of securing the country. In large part, his popularity has rested on the belief that he has kept the country reasonably secure.
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