BAGHDAD — Workers know a trip to the square could mean death, and still they go.
Every day, laborers crowd downtown Tayaran Square, the scene of nine bombings in the last three years, according to Iraq's Interior Ministry. But with unemployment as high as 60%, families survive on the jobs men find here -- jobs that pay an average of $10 a day.
They faced their latest challenge Tuesday, a suicide bombing that left at least 76 people dead and more than 200 injured, the Interior Ministry said. The nation's leaders condemned the attack and promised to investigate.
But workers complain that the government offers little relief from a cycle of poverty and violence that is pushing them toward extremism.
Ali Naji, 32, avoided the square as long as he could. He returned Tuesday because he desperately needed the money. One of the car bombs exploded as he watched a group of fellow laborers eating breakfast.
"I saw their flesh shattered," Naji said.
Witnesses saw a driver in a pickup approach the square before 7 a.m., collect several workers and leave. Soon after, a second driver appeared, slamming into a group of workers and detonating his car, said witness Swadi Hussein, 28. After police responded to the first blast, the pickup driver returned, drove into the patrol and detonated his truck, Hussein said.
"As soon as the first explosion happened, I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn't move," said Hussein, who sells secondhand clothes at the market on the square. "I was too shocked to do anything." Hussein blacked out and came to in a hospital with glass embedded in his head.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Kareem Khalaf said the attack was retaliation for raids carried out this week by ministry investigators, who killed 17 sus-pected insurgents and detained 32. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, called the attack a "horrible massacre" and promised a thorough investigation.
Workers at Tayaran, also known as Aviation Square, are poor and mostly Shiites. Some are professionals, college graduates who lost their jobs and businesses as Iraq's economy faltered over the last three years. Others are craftsmen unable to find steady work.
They stand in the square, at the intersection of Nidhal Street and the busy road leading to the city center, in front of the stores that rent dirt compactors, cement mixers and other construction equipment. Sometimes they sit at the stalls of vendors on the corner who sell sweet tea, fried eggplant, potato sandwiches and falafel and remember better days, years ago, when the sellers could barely keep up with the flow of customers.
