Day's Toll in Iraq Bombings, Drive-Bys Nears 100

Updated 1:26 p.m. EST

Suicide bombings, car bombs and gunmen using silencers were part of a wave of assaults against markets, a factory car park and police and army checkpoints across Iraq Monday in what has become the deadliest day of the year.

Officials say at least 99 Iraqis were killed and hundreds more wounded, in what appeared in part to be a targeted assault on police and army forces around Baghdad and in other parts of the country.

The government blamed al Qaeda in Iraq for violence in Baghdad, saying the terror group is stepping up its attacks now to exploit political instability. More than two months after the March 7 elections, it is not clear who will control the next Iraqi government, and the U.S. is planning to pull out half of its 92,000 troops over the next four months.

In the latest violence, three bombs hit the southern Shiite port city of Basra in the evening. At least one exploded in a marketplace, killing at least 15, hospital and police officials said.

In today's worst attack, a suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his belt blew himself up among a crowd of people who were trying to help victims of two car bombs that went off earlier outside a textile factory in the Shiite city of Hillah south of Baghdad, said provincial police spokesman Maj. Muthana Khalid.

At least 45 were killed and 140 wounded, said Khalid and Zuhair al Khafaji, director of al-Hillah general hospital.

Police said the cars were parked outside the factory about 25 yards apart, and were believed to be detonated by remote control. Khalid said the bombs exploded around 1:30 p.m. as workers were leaving the factory.

Hillah, the capital of Babil province, is 60 miles south of Baghdad.

Witnesses said they saw blood pooled and pieces of flesh on the ground outside the factory.

"Terrified people were running in different directions," said Jassim Znad Abid, a taxi driver who lives in Hillah. "I saw dead people, some burned and crying, wounded people on the ground that was covered with pools of blood. Dozens of wounded people asking for help were laying on the ground."

Khalid said the two car bombs parked outside the factory about 25 yards apart exploded first as workers were leaving the factory around 1:30 p.m. They were believed to be detonated by remote control.

Then as rescuers and workers were trying to help the injured, the suicide attacker struck.

Babil provincial Gov. Salman Nassir al-Zargawi ordered flags lowered to half-staff and a three-day mourning period. In an interview with Iraqi state TV, al-Zargawi said he was informed Sunday that the factory was under threat, but cited too many security gaps across Babil to protect all sites he feared could be targeted.

"There are many fragile places especially in the north of Babil ... and there are a lot of security gaps there," al-Zargawi said. "So we are facing a daily challenge in Babil."

The day's violence began in Baghdad with the checkpoint attacks. Most of the incidents were drive-by shootings in which assailants wearing uniforms of city government employed cleaners used weapons fixed with silencers to spray checkpoints and patrols with bullets.

The first attack came around 3 a.m. in western Baghdad when gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on an army patrol, killing one soldier and injuring another, Iraqi officials said.

That incident was followed by at least six other attacks. Although most of them were drive-by shootings, a roadside bomb in western Baghdad targeting a police patrol killed three civilians.

It was not immediately known who was behind the attacks or how many people were involved in the incidents which took place over roughly 2 1/2 hours in five different neighborhoods across the capital.

Iraqi police also were targeted elsewhere. Four bombs planted outside the homes of police officials in Fallujah, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, killed at least three people and wounded at least 13 others, including women and children, according to a city police official.

Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, spokesman for Baghdad's security operations center, said Iraqi security forces arrested one suspect and seized a pistol with a silencer.

The violence delivered a chilling reminder that insurgents are still able to stage large scale operations despite security gains by Iraqi and U.S. forces over past years.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But al-Moussawi blamed al Qaeda in Iraq for the Baghdad attacks, saying the terror group is attempting to exploit Iraq's political instability.

"Al Qaeda is trying to ... use some gaps created by some political problems," the Iraqi security spokesman told Arabiya TV. "There are well-known agendas for the terrorist groups operating in Iraq. Some of these groups are supported regionally and internationally with the aim of influencing the political and democratic process inside Iraq."

U.S. Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza, the top military spokesman in Iraq, said the attacks show "there is a threat out there that we have to be concerned about, and the threat is still capable."

Violence in Iraq has fallen dramatically since the height of the insurgency in 2006 and 2007. But the political vacuum in the wake of the inconclusive election has raised the risk that sectarian violence will pick up again.

Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya coalition, a secular group heavily backed by the Sunni Arab minority, edged out Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's religious Shiite bloc by two seats in the parliamentary election but neither won an outright majority, forcing them to seek partners to form a ruling coalition.

In other attacks Monday the small town of Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, was hit by a pair of bombs - one in a parked car and the other planted along a road - that killed 11 passers-by and wounded dozens, an Iraqi police official and a hospital worker in the nearby city of Kut said.

In Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad, city Mayor Mohammed Jassim was injured when bombs in parked cars targeted his convoy. In all, five people were killed and 18 injured in the attack, said a city police official.

At least six people were killed west of Baghdad in the city of Abu Ghraib by three different bombings , Iraqi officials said.

Seven more were killed in four separate attacks stretching from the northern city of Mosul to the Shiite city of Musayyib south of Baghdad.

In the capital today, Iraqi military and police fanned out across the city after gunmen in speeding cars attacked security checkpoints and military patrols in the early morning hours, officials said. At least 10 people were killed in those attacks.

The attacks also come at a precarious time as Iraq awaits a new government to be formed more than two months after landmark parliamentary elections and worries that insurgents will try to exploit the ongoing political uncertainty to stoke new violence.

The election results have yet to be certified by the country's highest court - which must happen before any new government can be formed - and a recount demanded by al-Maliki in Baghdad is ongoing.

If the results are overturned or Allawi is not perceived as the winner deserving a legitimate shot at forming a government, that could in turn outrage the Sunnis who supported him. Sunni anger at Shiite domination of successive governments was a key reason behind the insurgency.