Suicide bombers' rush hour attack leaves 68 dead

BASRA, Iraq -- Five suicide attackers detonated car bombs against police buildings during rush hour Wednesday in the British-controlled southern Iraqi city Basra, killing 68 people, including 16 children burned to death in their passing school buses.\nMeanwhile, an agreement aimed at bringing peace to Fallujah, Iraq, met troubles only a day after its implementation. U.S Marines backed by warplanes and helicopter gunships battled insurgents, killing 20.\nThe battle began with an ambush by 13 insurgents on Marines, who called in Cobra gunships that killed 10 of the attackers, Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said. Nearly three dozen insurgents then joined the fight with Marines in a running battle that lasted four hours. It ended when warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs. Ten more insurgents were killed, Byrne said.\nIraqi officials blamed al Qaeda for the bloodiest attack in Basra, a mainly Shiite city, since the U.S.-led occupation began a year ago.\nThe attacks wounded about 200 people and marked a revival of the terror threat, as U.S. forces have battled guerrillas across the country since the beginning of the month.\nBombers simultaneously detonated four cars packed with missiles and TNT just after 7 a.m. in front of three police stations -- one of them next to Basra's main street market -- and a police academy. An hour later, another car bomb went off outside the police academy located in Zubair, a suburb of mainly Shiite Basra.\nTwo bombers were captured before they could attack, Basra Gov. Wael Abdul-Latif said, adding he believed al Qaeda was behind the bombings. He said 16 children and nine policemen were among the dead.\nIraqis pulled charred and torn bodies from mangled vehicles in front of the Saudia police station, located next to Basra's crowded main street market -- one of three stations and a police academy hit by a total of five car bombs, said Basra's governor.\nAbout 200 people were wounded, including four British soldiers, officials said. British troops oversee security for southern Iraq, including the port city of Basra.\nTwo vans passing the Saudia station were destroyed -- one carrying kindergartners, the other taking girls to middle school. Dead children, burned beyond recognition, were taken to hospital morgues.\nIraqi Interior Minister Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi blamed "terrorists." He said the Basra attack resembled suicide bombings earlier this year against Shiites and Kurds that were blamed on foreign Islamic militants.\n"The information we have indicates that the attacks were carried out with car bombs," al-Sumeidi said. "The fingerprints of the parties that were behind the massacres in Iraq as in Irbil and Karbala, Iraq, can be seen in today's attacks."\nU.S. officials have pointed to al Qaeda-linked Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the March 2 suicide bombings at Shiite shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, Iraq, that killed at least 181. Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group based in the north, is suspected in bombings in Irbil that left 109 dead.\nAl-Zarqawi has outlined a plot to attack Shiite religious sites to foment civil war between Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and Sunni minority, say U.S. officials pointing to a letter from al-Zarqawi to al Qaeda leaders the military says it intercepted earlier this year.\nIn London, Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons the attackers were "desperate" terrorists who "were prepared to attack literally the most defenseless people they can find, simply to cause chaos."\nForeign Secretary Jack Straw said the attacks would not derail the planned handover of power to an Iraqi administration June 30.\nAbdul-Latif said up to 16 children and nine policemen were among the 68 dead, though other officials gave lower numbers of children. Police Commander Mohammed Kadhim al-Ali said the cars were packed with missiles and TNT.\nThe bombings brought yet another front of violence as U.S. forces are locked in a standoff with a radical Shiite cleric in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq, and Sunni insurgents in the central city of Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad.\nAs of noon in Fallujah, no heavy weapons had been turned in, the most crucial tenet of the agreement in U.S. eyes, Byrne said. The U.S. military has warned it may resume its assault on Fallujah if the agreement falls through.\nFor now, the Marines were responding by halting a part of the agreement of great concern to the Fallujans, the return of families that fled during the fighting since April 5, Byrne said.