BAGHDAD — Senior American military officials produced photographs Saturday they said showed the bodies of two female suicide bombers who a day earlier attacked two popular pet markets, causing Baghdad's deadliest blasts in months.
The photographs showed the lifeless faces of two dark-haired women with oblique eye fissures, a wide gap between the eyes and a flat nose bridge -- characteristics consistent with Down syndrome.
"There are some indications that these two women were mentally handicapped," said Army Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad. "From what I see, it appears that the suicide bombers were not willing martyrs. They were used by Al Qaeda [in Iraq] for these horrific attacks."
Hammond showed the classified photographs to a few reporters, including one for The Times, but he declined to release the images "out of respect for the deceased."
"These two women were likely used because they didn't know what was happening and they were less likely to be searched," Hammond said.
Iraqi police said 99 people were killed and 208 were wounded Friday in the two blasts. Hammond said 27 were killed and 53 wounded. The officials were unable to say why their numbers disagreed so widely.
According to Hammond, one woman wore a suicide vest and the other carried a backpack loaded with explosives, nails and metal pellets. He did not know whether they were detonated remotely.
The apparently coordinated attacks occurred 10 minutes apart shortly before 11 a.m. Witness accounts varied. Some said both women appeared to be mentally disabled, whereas others said at least one attack was carried out by a blond woman with no visible disability.
Despite the carnage, Hammond said, "people are returning to their neighborhoods and peace is returning to Baghdad."
At the two markets Saturday, abandoned puppies milled amid the workers gathered to clean the wreckage of broken stalls, cages and animal parts. The central Baghdad market had snakes, monkeys, dogs and cats, and the southeast Baghdad market had birds.
Indications that the two attackers were mentally disabled upset battle-worn Iraqis.
At the market in southeast Baghdad, Abu Gasan, a 43-year-old teacher who maintains an electricity shop, lamented that many of Iraq's state institutions for the developmentally disabled had shuttered since the start of the war in 2003, leaving their former residents vulnerable to the city's violence.
