Baghdad blasts mock US claims of Iraqi progress

Following death of Zarqawi and visit by Bush, leaders fail to bring end to cycle of violence

The seven separate blasts at locations across the city are likely similarly to frustrate the efforts of the White House to demonstrate a degree of progress in Iraq since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi earlier this month, and the surprise visit to Baghdad last Monday by President George Bush.

In the meantime, a new Pentagon investigation revealed details of abusive treatment of detainees in Iraq early in 2004 by members of US special forces. The report said the soldiers were continuing to use interrogation techniques that had been ruled unacceptable several months earlier by the Pentagon because they were too harsh, including feeding one inmate on bread and water only for 17 days.

After President Bush stressed to Iraqi leaders the importance of their taking greater responsibility for security, the new government responded on Wednesday with a huge deployment of forces in Baghdad designed to bring an end to the cycle of violence.

The security campaign included a ban on the use of private cars during the hours of prayer on Friday. However, even that measure was thwarted when a suspected shoe bomber detonated a powerful explosion inside one of Baghdad's most important Shia mosques, killing 13 people.

Police described scenes of carnage in the capital after yesterday's bombings, which began with a mortar attack on one of Baghdad's oldest markets in the prominently Shia suburb of Kazimiyah. At least four people died. Shortly afterwards another market was struck by a bomb left in a plastic bag, killing two civilians. And a car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol left seven dead and 10 wounded.

The renewed violence comes as President Bush was seeking to take advantage of the death of Zarqawi to convince a sceptical American public that the situation in Iraq was starting to improve. However, a new CNN poll showed 54 per cent of Americans still believe the war was a mistake, and the political pressure on Mr Bush is growing in the run-up to crucial mid-term elections for the US Congress.

The White House public relations campaign on Iraq is also being clouded by the investigation into claims that a group of US Marines went on a rampage in the town of Haditha in November 2005 and indiscriminately killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including 10 women and children. Against this background, the new Pentagon report on the conduct of Special Operations forces in Iraqi prisons, released in heavily censored form to the American Civil Liberties Union, threatens to make President Bush's job still more difficult.

Some of the contents of the investigation, carried out by Brigadier General Richard Formica, were passed to members of Congress a year ago. No charges have been brought against the soldiers involved, as Gen Formica concluded that the problem lay with "inadequate police guidance" rather than "personal failure" on their parts.

Aside from the man on a ration of bread and water, other detainees were locked in cells so small they could neither lie down nor stand for several days, while interrogators played loud music to stop them sleeping.

The report also said that interrogators sometimes stripped detainees of their clothes, doused them with water and allowed them to stand shivering in air-conditioned rooms. It said one detainee subject to such treatment by Navy Seal interrogators in Mosul had died during questioning.