BAGHDAD: In the streets of Baghdad, people wondered on 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 smouldering 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 similar scenes played out in the wake of a triple car bombing that had killed 15 people the night before.

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

And with the temperature rising, as it has every day for weeks, people voiced anger at the prospect of spending their third summer since the US-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 neighbourhood 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 programmes to assist the country’s nearly five-month-old government. The conference had been billed in large part as that government’s debut on the world stage and an opportunity for its leaders to lay out their plans to rebuild the country.

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 January 30 drew large numbers of voters despite the threat of 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 Sunnis 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 as she stopped to buy vegetables at a shop in the eastern Baghdad district of Ghadir.

In another eastern neighbourhood, Bashar Hanna, 30, said: “We need action, not speeches. ... Iraqis now are like a car stuck in the mud. Whenever this car wants to get out of the mud, it sticks more in the crater it created.”—Dawn-LAT/WP News Service