BAGHDAD, Aug 17: Three car bombs killed 43 people in a coordinated attack on a Baghdad bus station in the morning rush hour on Wednesday. Eighty-eight people were wounded, an official in the interior ministry said, adding: “The casualty figure could rise as there are charred bodies all over the place.”

Police and medics were among the dead, struck by the third bomb, between the bus station and the nearby Kindi hospital as victims of the earlier blasts were being taken there. Three policemen were among the dead and 10 were wounded.

One witness said a bus about to depart for Iraq’s second city of Basra had been incinerated by the blast and it appeared many passengers were killed.

The multiple explosions suggested an attack by one of the radical groups active in the resistance against the US-backed government – though unlike many bombings by groups like Al Qaeda, several police sources said none of the cars was driven by a suicide attacker.

That would mean the attackers had laid an elaborate trap to place and time a car bomb to go off just at the point where rescue services were moving casualties toward medical aid.

Iraq’s state television interrupted TV shows in which angry citizens called in comments on the attacks to announce that four suspects had been caught in the possession of bomb equipment.

BLAST SEQUENCE: The first two bombs, shortly before 0400 GMT, sent black smoke billowing into a clear sky. One went off near an entrance to the Nahda bus station, a hub for destinations across Iraq. The second exploded inside a few minutes later.