Up to 13 Die as Attacks Shatter Fragile Calm in Southern Iraq

ARBALA, Iraq, Dec. 27 — At least four soldiers from the occupying forces and at least nine Iraqis were killed Saturday in highly organized suicide bombing attacks in this Shiite holy city 60 miles southwest of Baghdad.   More than 100 soldiers and civilians were wounded.   Most of the casualties were not American.

The fatal strikes were the deadliest in a string of bold assaults against allied forces this holiday week, and they brought a burst of violence to what had been a relatively calm southern Iraq.

While more than 90 percent of all attacks on allied forces have occurred north of Karbala, in areas with a majority of Sunni Muslims and strong loyalties to Saddam Hussein, the latest attacks in this city sacred to Iraq's Shiite majority revived a pattern of bomb attacks in the south.   A huge bomb in August killed an influential Shiite, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, and scores of others in Najaf, and another bombing this fall killed 19 Italian troops in Nasiriya.

Insurgents mounted three coordinated attacks in Karbala on Saturday, using a range of weapons against the military base of the Polish soldiers who are the lead occupying forces in the region, the local government building that includes the mayor's office and a base for Bulgarian soldiers in a corner of Ahil al-Beit University.

In Baghdad, the American military command said 4 soldiers had been killed and 37 soldiers wounded in the attacks, including 5 Americans.   Military officials gave no figure for the number of Iraqi civilians wounded.

A spokesman for the United States Army Command, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmett, said that all three attacks in Karbala had involved suicide car-bombs, and that the attackers had also used machine guns, rifles and grenades.

A Bulgarian soldier who was standing guard on a road to the university on Saturday evening said a water tanker had exploded after it drove past a police station outside the campus and had rammed into the Bulgarian military base before exploding.   About 500 Bulgarian soldiers are stationed in Karbala.

The explosion, between 11 a.m. and noon, appeared to have destroyed the entire base, witnesses said.   At 8:30 p.m., several nervous Bulgarian soldiers stood guard by a truck blocking an entrance road to the university.   One soldier said the Bulgarians would now abandon the campus.   Soldiers at the post pleaded with a visitor for a satellite phone to call home.

Many of the wounded at the university were students, witnesses said.

In the city's main hospital, Kazim Abdul-Hussein, who worked as a guard at an intermediate school on the campus, said there was a huge boom after the water tanker ran into the military base.   Mr. Abdul-Hussein lay on a bed on the hospital's second floor with a chunk of flesh missing from his right arm and a dry rivulet of blood across his face.

His wife, who had just received nine stitches for a wound on her leg, lay on another bed.   Four of their children were also wounded and lay wrapped in blankets on the floor and on the beds.   Mr. Abdul-Hussein said the first floor of the school, where his family lived, was destroyed.

"We have nothing except for the clothes we are wearing," he said.   "Everything is gone."

Yousif Hasnawi, a doctor at the hospital, said 13 people had died in the three attacks in Karbala, including eight policemen who had been guarding the local government building.   The dead were being stored in the hospital's freezer.   The doctor said about 120 people were wounded, 50 of them seriously.

Hussein Ganim, a member of an American-trained guard force, said two of his friends were among the policemen killed.   He said he had rushed to the hospital and seen charred bodies strewn across the emergency room.   He added that two Iraqi civilians might have died in the blast at the mayor's office, and that the explosion took place at about 1 p.m. and was caused by a rocket that was fired at the building.

"I don't know who they are, but these people definitely are not from Karbala," he said.   "Who here would blow up the city?"