Iraqi press laments Baghdad blasts

Iraqi Ministry of Labor Ministry of Labor after the attack

The Iraqi press has railed against the government and security forces following Sunday's suicide attacks in Baghdad which killed 150 people. Iraqi leaders have said the bombings were the work of elements within Syria.

Some papers echo the government line, accusing "Iraq's neighbours" of trying to further destabilise the country ahead of the polls scheduled for January.

One commentator says that the authorities' failure to prevent the attack suggests that they are either incompetent or complicit in some way. Another calls for the incident not to be "internationalised", saying that past experience has shown that perpetrators of such attacks often escape justice when "foreign bodies" become involved in investigations.

ABDALLAH AL-SUKUTI IN AL-MADA

Are we to assume that bomb-rigged cars, like the mule of the judge in the story, are endowed with magical powers that enable them to pass undetected through so many security checkpoints and to replicate previous bombings on the fringes of the same zone where security precautions are supposed to be at their highest? ... The most convincing explanation for the gruesome massacres we are witnessing is that Iraq's neighbours are beginning to get serious about derailing the approaching Iraqi public elections and bent on creating the destructive chaos they have always dreamt of seeing Iraq plunge into.

SABAH AL-LAMI IN AL-MASHRIQ

We have to realise that the forthcoming elections... will either save Iraq from the deteriorations of the 2003 invasion and the 2005 elections or turn the country into a graveyard for democracy as a cheap compensation for all its suffering... Iraq's plight is the result of non-existent political stability and lack of ideological wisdom at the levels of both government and opposition.

FATIH ABD-AL-SALAM IN AL-ZAMAN

It is a situation created by a persistent political failure to come up with a vision of the future that can make the necessary shift from the language of liquidation, eradication, assassination and random detention to that of the open-minded inclusiveness required to salvage Iraq from sinking forever...

WAFIQ AL-SAMARRA'I IN AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT

Either the plotters have considerable influence in the institutions of the incumbent regime, or the present Iraqi security apparatuses are scandalously unfit for the job... Either way, the party that is to blame the most for such terrible security setbacks is the Iraqi premiership, which is morbidly seeking to establish partisan control over the security forces.

WARID BADR AL-SALIM IN AL-MADA

We fear that, like the Bloody Wednesday (19 August 2009) atrocity before it, the massacre committed in Baghdad last Sunday will also be internationalised, in which case those responsible for shedding innocent Iraqi blood will be allowed to get away with their crime as we keep waiting for justice to be done by foreign bodies.

BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.

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