No power, water or peace of mind

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In the streets of Baghdad, people wondered Thursday what else could possibly go wrong.

In Karrada, a commercial district across the Tigris River from the city's fortified Green Zone, wreckage was still smoldering hours after four car bombs exploded shortly after dawn, killing 17 people and wounding 20. Water sprayed on the resulting fires mingled in pools with the blood of the casualties. On the north side of the city, in Shuala — like Karrada, an area populated mostly by Shiite Muslims — similar scenes played out after a triple car bombing that had killed 15 people the night before.

Around Baghdad, neighborhoods were celebrating the return of running water but still lamenting the three-day drought caused when insurgents ruptured a water line north of the city.

And with the temperature exceeding 100 degrees, as it has every day for weeks, people voiced anger at the prospect of spending their third summer since the U.S.-led invasion with intermittent electricity. Those with generators will be able to power air conditioners and other appliances; the rest will simply bake in the intense heat.

"So many problems are happening in the city," said Mohammed Sarhan, 50, a grocer in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora. "Where do I start — water, electricity, security, unemployment or health?"

"This is not a life," Sarhan added. "This is hell."

A gathering of representatives from more than 80 countries and organizations in Brussels on Wednesday was marked by statements of support for Iraq and announcements of programs to assist the country's nearly five-month-old government.

In Baghdad, however, the government's performance was repeatedly cited in interviews as one of the many disappointing aspects of a year that began promisingly. Elections on Jan. 30 drew large numbers of voters despite the threat of insurgent violence. But formal installation of a government and formation of a committee to write Iraq's next constitution were delayed for months, and efforts to bring more Sunni Muslim Arabs into the process after they boycotted the elections continue to sputter.

"We sacrificed our souls and went out to vote. What did we get? Simply nothing," said Karima Sadoun, 56, as she stopped to buy vegetables at a shop in the eastern Baghdad district of Ghadir.

Baghdad's on-again, off-again power supply, while familiar, is no less maddening than in past summers, residents said. While statistics for May and June are not yet available, the amount of electricity generated in Baghdad decreased steadily through February, March and April even as nationwide supplies rose, according to State Department figures. Baghdad's daily average of 854 megawatts in April was scarcely more than a third of the city's estimated prewar output of 2,500 megawatts a day.

Sarhan, the grocer, said the power shortages affected his work. "Not too many people come and buy from me, because they don't have electricity," he said. "They don't have a place to keep what they buy."

"The lack of electricity has destroyed our lives," said Waleed Najeeb, 48, who owns a supermarket in Dora. "It has affected us psychologically and practically. I don't sleep well, and because of that the way I treat people has changed."

On top of that, the three-day water shortage "turned everything in Baghdad upside down," Najeeb said. He added, "I would go home tired from work and have to stop at the nearest water pipe and bring some water to my family for drinking and washing."

Among Baghdad's many hardships, the lack of security surpasses all, according to those interviewed. In the four weeks after the country's Shiite-led government was finally installed in late April, car bombings carried out by the mostly Sunni insurgents killed more than 900 people across the country and sent fear through Baghdad's neighborhoods. After a brief lull in early June that coincided with the start of a security crackdown in and around Baghdad, the bombings resumed.

"What kind of generation are we raising under these conditions?" Najeeb asked. "There are no places to take my child to have some fun." In Karrada, the scene of Thursday's quadruple bombings, residents gathered at Radhi Hussein's tea shop, about 10 yards from a gas station where one of the bombs killed three police officers and seven civilians. They exchanged news about who had escaped the blast and who had not, whose shop had been damaged and whose hadn't.

Hussein recounted what had happened to a policeman named Ali, "a very nice young man" who used to come to his shop every morning to have tea. "I saw him," Hussein said. "He was crawling on the street. Then he stopped moving, and that was it."

Naji Abid Ali, clearing broken glass from in front of his clothing store, said he believed the attacks were aimed at intensifying tensions between Iraq's newly ascendant Shiite majority and the Sunnis, who dominated under Saddam Hussein.

"They are after Karrada because most of the people here are Shiite," he said. "But they will never be able to push us into a sectarian war. We are cleverer than that. We will rebuild everything they destroyed here but will never kill other Iraqis."

Already, repair work was under way at Albu Shujaa Mosque, where a car bomb had damaged the main gate and nearby houses and cars but caused no casualties. Workers climbed power poles to string a new electrical cable, and passers-by stopped to help clean up debris.

Nearby, a scruffy young man stood staring at vegetables scattered on the ground by one of the explosions. Bending over and picking up an onion spattered with blood, he began to cry.

"Every one of you in Karrada calls me Crazy Ali," he said to no one in particular. "But I would never do such a thing. I am better than you sane people. At least I do not hurt you."

Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.