Bombs add to Iraqi political crisis
The deaths come despite a US-led security crackdown in Baghdad
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Wednesday, 01, Aug 2007 07:58
More than 70 people have been killed in a double car bombing in Iraq, on a day when the country's fragile government was plunged into another crisis.
As the death toll from the two separate attacks in Baghdad was revealed, the largest Sunni Arab bloc in Iraq announced its withdrawal from prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration.
The Iraqi accordance front, which counts deputy prime minister Salam al-Zobaie and five other cabinet ministers among its representatives, said that the policies of the Shia-led government were behind its decision.
A statement claimed that Mr al-Maliki had failed to act against Shia Muslim militias as promised.
In the first of two attacks to strike the Iraqi capital today, at least 20 people were killed and dozens injured in the Shia district of Karrada when a bomb was detonated in a vehicle parked beside an ice cream parlour.
Later a separate bomb saw at least 50 people killed after a fuel tanker exploded near a petrol station in the mostly-Sunni Mansour district.
The deaths come as an official count puts the number of civilian deaths in Iraq in July at more than 1,600; an increase on June's total and also in excess of the deaths recorded in February before the US army's much-publicised security crackdown began in Baghdad.
The US army itself said that three of its soldiers had died today, while the Ministry of Defence also revealed that a British soldier had been killed in Basra, southern Iraq.