Blasts rock Baghdad as Chemical Ali hangs

Yesterday's blasts came in a span of about 15 minutes. No-one claimed responsibility for them.

Around six weeks ago a series of bombings killed 127 causing an outcry over Iraq's government for repeated security lapses.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the bombings "represent an extension" of the activities of insurgents linked to Saddam's regime.

They came as Iraq executed Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali", for war crimes.

But he stopped short of declaring the blast as possible revenge for the execution.

The first explosion struck at about 3.40pm local time in the car park of the Sheraton Hotel, toppling high concrete blast walls protecting the site and damaging a number of buildings along the Abu Nawas esplanade across the Tigris River from the Green Zone.

Two other blasts followed minutes later, striking near the Babylon Hotel and al-Hamra Hotel, which is popular with Western journalists and foreign security contractors.

The officials said the death toll was expected to rise.

According to initial tallies, 15 of the victims were at the al-Hamra, 14 at the Sheraton, and the remaining seven died at the Babylon, including two policemen.

Outside the Sheraton, a high-rise tower with views of the Tigris River and the fortified Green Zone on the other side, the blast left a 10ft crater in the car park. Cars were torn apart by the spray of metal and glass, which littered the lawns and courtyards of the popular fish restaurants along the river.

At the al-Hamra, two men in a car opened fire on guards at the hotel checkpoint before detonating the explosives, a third police official said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the attacks were an attempt to disrupt the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

"We unfortunately believe there will be continued efforts by the terrorists, by al-Qaida in particular, to try to upend the commitment of the Iraqi people to a democratic future," she said.

"Chemical Ali" was hanged for a poison gas attack on the northern Iraqi Kurds in 1988 that killed 5,000 people.

Al-Majid was executed a week after he received his fourth death

sentence, the final one for the gas attack.

He bore a striking resemblance to Saddam and was one of the most brutal members of the dictator's inner circle.

The general led sweeping military campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s that claimed tens of thousands of lives – wiping out entire villages in attacks against rebellious Kurds and cracking down on Shiites in southern Iraq.

Al-Majid was one of the last high-profile members of the former Sunni-led regime still on trial in Iraq.

In 1988, as the eight-year Iran-Iraq war was winding down, he commanded a scorched-earth campaign known as Anfal to wipe out a Kurdish

rebellion in northern Iraq.

An estimated 100,000 people – most of them civilians – were killed over less than a year. Later, al-Majid boasted about the attacks, as well as the separate March 16, 1988, gas attack on Halabja, which gave him his nickname.