Rescue workers pull bodies from rubble as death toll from attacks in Iraq rises to 64

(AP) Rescue crews pulled bodies from the rubble of bombed buildings Friday after a barrage of coordinated attacks across eastern Baghdad neighborhoods killed at least 64 people and wounded more than 280 within half an hour, police said.

The latest spasm of violence on Thursday evening _ which included explosives planted in apartments, car bombs and several rocket and mortar attacks on mainly Shiite neighborhoods _ came even as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Iraqi forces should have control over most of the country by year's end.

The death toll from the Baghdad bombings increased to 64 people as more bodies were recovered, police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani said Friday.

The attacks _ centered on neighborhoods controlled by Shiite militias, some of which Sunni Arabs accuse of running death squads _ brought Thursday's death toll across the country to at least 85.

Attackers rented apartments and shops in buildings a few days ago and planted explosives in them, detonating them by remote control almost simultaneously Thursday evening, Maj. Gen. Jihad Liaabi, director of the Interior Ministry's counterterrorism unit, told state television late Thursday.

The attacks occurred between 6 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. and included a car bomb at a market, another behind a telephone exchange building and several rocket and mortar attacks, police said.

On Friday morning, residents picked through the rubble of their homes, using blankets to carry their belongings out. Large chunks of concrete and burned-out cars littered the street.

Kindi hospital _ one of four where the wounded and dead were taken _ received dozens of casualties.

In one room, doctors wheeled a man with a bandaged leg on a gurney out of a room. "Slowly, slowly," he pleaded, crying in pain.

A young boy, his head and right leg heavily bandaged and his pillow bloodstained, pleaded for a glass of water.

Haidar Nassier said an explosion had ripped through a clothes store in his neighborhood of al-Ameen. "My neighbor, four of his children were injured, and one of them died," he told Associated Press Television News outside the hospital.

Earlier Thursday, a suicide car bomber killed two people at a gas station, while a British Embassy convoy was targeted in the upscale Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad, wounding two passers-by, police said.

The bloodshed was part of a violent week that has left hundreds of Iraqis dead.

The U.S. military also announced that two American soldiers and a Marine were killed Wednesday. According to an AP count, that death brings to 18 the number of U.S. soldiers killed since Sunday.

But authorities said they were optimistic about the handover of security in the country.

Al-Maliki said Iraqi forces will assume responsibility for Dhi Qar province in the south in September, making it the second of Iraq's 18 provinces that local forces would take control over.

"This makes us optimistic and proud because we managed to fulfill our promise," al-Maliki said. Iraqi authorities took over Muthanna province in the south from the British in July.

Dhi Qar is populated mainly by Shiite Muslims. Compared to more volatile areas, such as Anbar province in the west and Baghdad, it has been spared much sectarian violence. But U.S. commanders have expressed concern about the growing influence of Shiite militias in the area, many of whom they say receive support from Iran.

Handing over territory from coalition control to Iraqi control is a key part of any eventual drawdown of U.S. troops in the country.

On Wednesday, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said Iraqi troops were on course to take over security control from U.S.-led coalition forces in the next 12-18 months with little coalition help.

But President Bush insisted American troops must remain in Iraq until the country's forces are capable of full control. "If America were to pull out before Iraq could defend itself, the consequences would be absolutely predictable, and absolutely disastrous," Bush said in Salt Lake City.

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Associated Press reporter Murtadha Abdul Karim contributed to this report from Baghdad.