Walkout at Saddam trial, Baghdad bombs kill 41

Twenty-three people were killed when a bomb left at a petrol station in eastern Baghdad blasted people lining up for fuel, police said. At least seven were killed in two other explosions, including an apparent car bomb in a busy street across the Tigris river from the trial in one of Saddam’s former palaces.

Some 115 people were wounded in all, police said, in the bloodiest onslaught in the capital in two months and among the most serious since an alleged Al-Qaeda bomb destroyed a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday, sparking tit-for-tat reprisals.

The Prime Minister’s office, in an unusual move, issued a statement putting the total death toll over six days at 379 “martyrs” and denied reports that it was well over 1,000.

Baghdad morgue alone said it received 309 bodies since Wednesday, most victims of violence. Morgue data showed this was double the average—it handled 10,080 bodies in 2005.