BAGHDAD — The explosions Thursday came not long after dawn, just hours after a triple bombing had torn through Baghdad's Shula neighborhood the previous evening.
This time, the victimized area was Karada, a middle-class district lately busy with shoppers, tea shop habitues and others hopeful that a breath of normality might be returning to this battered capital two years into a ferocious war with insurgents.
But the conflict here has a way of dashing hopes and quashing optimism. Four apparently synchronized car bombs tore through Karada, targeting two mosques, a popular bathhouse and a commercial street, leaving residents in shock over the carnage and destruction. A fifth bomb -- 200 pounds of explosives and a timing device inside a van -- was disarmed.
"It seems that we are reaching a point of no return," said an exasperated Abed Qadeer, a local architect.
In the chaos that followed the morning's attacks, much of central Baghdad was gridlocked and felt more menacing than usual. Masked Iraqi commandos riding in pickups and waving Kalashnikov rifles shut down streets and rerouted motorists.
By noon, U.S. tanks were rolling through the streets of Karada in one of the largest public shows of force in the area since Iraqis went to the polls Jan. 30, an event celebrated as a triumph of democracy over terrorism.
The unrelenting violence of the Iraq spring soon obscured the memories of defiant voters displaying ink-stained fingers after casting their ballots. Just a few days ago, however, U.S. and Iraqi officials were declaring Baghdad a success story, a place where a sweep called Operation Lightning had depleted the ranks of car bombers.
In fact, some of the blasts late Wednesday and early Thursday appeared to have been detonated remotely, perhaps supporting U.S. assertions that the supply of suicide bombers -- who have functioned as the insurgency's precision weapons -- is dwindling.
Still, with so many unfulfilled predictions of imminent triumph, cautious commanders in recent days have stopped short of declaring victory. Most acknowledge that the insurgency is likely to last for years, with "spikes" of multiple attacks.
"I would say we have been relatively successful in reducing the violence in Baghdad," Army Maj. Gen. William G. Webster, whose forces patrolled the city and environs, said before the latest spasm of attacks. "I believe that ... saying anything about 'breaking the back' or 'about to reach the end of the line' or those kinds of things do not apply to the insurgency at this point.
