A car bomb blew up outside a hospital south of Baghdad yesterday, killing 31 people and wounding two dozen as militants stepped up their campaign of violence ahead of next month's elections.

The explosives-packed car detonated as Iraqi police were gathered outside Mahmoudiya General Hospital and a US military convoy was passing, witnesses and police said.

But most of those killed and wounded were civilians, including Hoda Ali Mahmoud, a 30-year-old woman who had just visited the hospital with her young son, who had a cold.

"The glass flew at us," she said as she sat up in hospital in Baghdad. "His nose was hit and he couldn't breathe." The body of her son, less than two years old, lay on the morgue floor at Yarmouk hospital.

Another woman, Sama Aboud Saleh, sat on the floor of the hospital in Baghdad crying. "The blast hit men, women and children, but the Americans were not hit," she said.

The head of the emergency room at the hospital said the explosion had killed 31 people and wounded 28. Police sources put the death toll at 30 with around two dozen wounded. It was not clear if it was a suicide attack.

Mahmoudiya, about 30 kilometers south of Baghdad, has seen considerable violence in the past two years. It sits in an area dubbed the Triangle of Death for the frequency of attacks.

Boycott scrapped

Meanwhile, defence lawyers will attend next week's trial of Saddam Hussein and seven top members of his government, dropping a threat to boycott the proceedings because of the killing of two counsels, a spokesman for the defence said yesterday.

Not only the lawyers, but also the US soldiers feel threatened by the insurgent violence. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested this week that a troop reduction may start fairly soon.

But a significant pullout is not expected until well into 2006, as a strong presence is needed until the new Iraqi Government has settled in and more Iraqi police and military units are fully trained.
 
In other incidents yesterday, the Polish military said three Polish soldiers and an Iraqi child had been slightly wounded in an explosion near the town of Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, near where Polish troops are based.

(China Daily November 25, 2005)