"They're going for every day of the week," bombs rock Baghdad, 127 killed

(Iraqi security forces and rescuers search for survivors at the site of a bomb attack near the new Finance Ministry in Baghdad, Iraq, Dec. 8 2009 (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

The blast slammed like a gigantic gavel. It threw doors open and sucked them shut again. Windows rattled in their casements. Too close and powerful to shrug off, but nothing compared to what was happening outside our compound's blast walls.

Iraqi colleagues ran outside the building to scan the sky for smoke. It was rising in the distance (see picture). Most were already on their phones to check on family members. One colleague said his brother had been injured in the neighborhood. Another said his brother, who just missed being hit, helped pile some wounded in his car and was sped them to a local hospital. Today we learned a woman was waiting for her father who never came to pick her up. He was driving by as one of the bombs detonated.

A series of five bombs, at least three suicide, rocked Baghdad leaving 121 dead, the NYT reported. Car bombs struck- near a college, a court complex in western Baghdad, a mosque and a market and a neighborhood near the Interior Ministry in what appeared to be a larger and as equally deadly a coordinated assault as the Oct. 25th bombing. Offices of the Ministry of Labor and the Finance Ministry, which had moved to a new location after the massive October bombing were, hit again.

An expat Iraqi colleague described his convoy missing the first bomb in the Dora neighborhood by minutes. The guards at the next checkpoint waived them through fearing the bombers were targeting their convoy.

Today we happened to go to an oil refinery in Dora, the neighborhood where the first bomb detonated. The Director General was rolling a metal ball the size of a marble in his hands as we talked. It came from the bomb in Adimiya, he said. I imagined what that kind of shrapnel would do to a human body.

The bombings bear the signs of an Al-Qaeda in Iraq operation, all sources say, but in an evolving strategy targeting government ministries and offices in order to incite public outrage at the Maliki government for failing to provide the promised security and sow fear before the elections.

The election disagreements between parties and ethnic groups were just resolved this week. National elections are planned for March. Baghdadis say the bombings will continue until then, and it will probably get worse before it gets better.

Crudely written leaflets were found at some sites about a week before bombs struck, one local said. This kind of hand washing on the part of extremists before they attack has been reported throughout the war. Rumors also abound that the U.S. military may have picked up on intelligence before the October bombing and informed security contractors not to travel certain roads.

What is painfully true is the bombings, while nowhere near as frequent as a few years ago, have become more horrific in their destruction.

First the August bombing dubbed Bloody Wednesday killed 122, then the October bombing, dubbed Bloody Sunday killed 155. Today's bombing will most like be named Bloody Tuesday.

"They're going for every day of the week," a colleague said, in a nod to the gallows humor that is so common for Iraqis who have to live through this.