Explosions leave 183 dead

Military experts urged President Bush to reassess the security plan.
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- At least 183 people died in Baghdad on Wednesday in a series of major explosions, making the day the capital's deadliest since the onset nine weeks ago of a much-touted U.S.-Iraqi security plan.
The violence capped a dreadful seven days that began with a stunning suicide attack in the Iraqi parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which killed a lawmaker. At least 363 people died in Baghdad in the past week, including 118 whose bodies were found dumped in various parts of the city.
In Washington, Pentagon officials urged patience, saying two of the five U.S. brigades ordered to Iraq as part of the security plan have yet to arrive. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in Israel, blamed al-Qaida for Wednesday's attacks and said military planners had anticipated such actions "to make the plan a failure or to make the people of Iraq believe the plan is a failure."
But Pentagon planners privately expressed concern. One official sighed at news of the bombings. "We don't have enough troops. It would take another 100,000" to properly protect Baghdad. Another said: "We are just trying the same things over and over again." Neither would agree to speak on the record, citing the sensitivity of the topic.
Outside the Pentagon, military experts urged the Bush administration to reassess its plan, which has reduced the number of unidentified corpses found on Baghdad's streets but has done nothing to stop mass-fatality bombings.
"Which one is better, assassination squads or spectacular bombings?" said Kevin Ryan, a retired brigadier general who's now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "They have to readjust."
But Jack Keane, a retired general who helped craft the surge policy, said it will be summer before an assessment can be done. If the violence continues to rise and Iraq's politicians can't find a political solution to the conflict, "then the operation will be unsuccessful."
Wednesday's carnage was the worst in Baghdad in several months. In addition to the dead, at least 228 people were injured throughout the city.
Attacks
The deadliest attack came in the central Sadriyah neighborhood, where Shiite Muslims predominate. Shortly after 4 p.m., a truck bomb exploded in a parking lot near the main marketplace, torching a cluster of about 30 Toyota minibuses filled with passengers, residents said.
Police officials said the blast killed 140 people and wounded 150, some of whom were swaddled in blankets and carted away from the scene in handcarts. Cranes lifted charred bodies from the wreckage while rescue workers cut through twisted metal to free trapped survivors.
U.S. military officials said the damage would have been even worse if the blast had penetrated a series of concrete barriers surrounding the shopping area, which is filled with restaurants.
The marketplace, one of the oldest in Baghdad, is being rebuilt after a Feb. 3 truck bombing killed about 130 people and incinerated many of the shops.
Less than an hour earlier, a suicide car bomber detonated on an overpass near a joint U.S.-Iraqi security station at the edge of Sadr City, the Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad that's named for the father of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi officials said 17 people were killed and 45 were injured.
Al-Sadr supporters denounced the attack but said they didn't know how the cleric -- who's been in hiding since the security plan went into effect -- or his followers in the massive Mahdi Army militia would respond.