Baghdad, Iraq - On Tuesday, bombers targeted Iraqi police applicants. Yesterday, it was the turn of men lining up to join the new Iraqi army.

The effect of the suicide bombings was almost identical: Scores killed, fury directed at the occupying forces and a despair expressed among many that Iraq's security is only worsening as the proposed handover to a new Iraqi government inches closer.

"The Americans did it," said Hussein Raed, 20, who lay in a bed at Yarmuk Hospital in Baghdad after being injured yesterday. "Can you imagine the Iraqis would do this to Iraqis? This is political. They want to control the country. They suspect that the new army would be against them."

While perhaps not a very credible theory, it was a common theme among survivors of the attack yesterday that killed at least 46 and the one Tuesday in Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, where more than 50 died. What made Raed's comments bode especially ill for Iraq's near future is that he, like most people in Iskandariyah, is a Shia Muslim.

Interviews with scores of Shia Iraqis in the past week - both in the aftermath of the past two bombings and also in calmer settings - suggest a growing cynicism within their community about the U.S. enterprise in Iraq.

It is Iraq's Sunnis who have so far been most hostile to the occupying forces. Iraq's top Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has insisted on direct elections in June to choose the new government. The United States wants regional caucuses, saying Iraq is not yet sufficiently peaceful to prevent violence during an election, nor its laws and census data up to the task.

With a UN team in Iraq to assess the situation, the bombings of the past two days appear to damage greatly the chances that the UN group will agree with Sistani and support elections. A decision is expected late next week.

Maj. John Frisbie, spokesman for the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 1st Armored Division, said the attackers want to make the world think Baghdad is unstable, "especially in the eyes of the visiting UN."

Since Jan. 1, at least 261 Iraqi civilians have been killed in major suicide attacks or car bombings, according to an Associated Press tally based on reports by the U.S. military or Iraqi police at the time. Neither Iraqi officials nor the U.S. military provides comprehensive figures on Iraqi casualties nationwide.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said 46 people died and 54 were wounded in yesterday's blast, while the U.S.-led coalition said 47 were killed and 55 wounded.

American military officials said the suicide bomber was in a white 1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra carrying between 300 and 500 pounds of explosives.

"I was standing in line to get the application form," said Raed, whose black hair and mustache were singed orange. "When I got the form, they told me to go in the other line next to the street. It was a white car, and it stopped at the end of the line and then reversed towards us."

The bomb ripped into the crowd of about 400, scattering car parts outside the army recruiting center in the heart of Baghdad.

The center was surrounded by barbed wire and sandbag barriers, but the men lining up outside were vulnerable to attack. Some survivors complained that the U.S. forces had left them exposed only a day after the Iskandariyah bombing had shown how easily recruitment centers for the new Iraqi security forces could be targeted.

At Yarmuk Hospital, Saad Shilaga al-Haideri, 27, blamed "terrorists" who "have a conflict with the Americans. They don't want stability in Iraq."

A laborer, al-Haideri was in the line when the bomber struck. Like some other would-be recruits, he had lost all enthusiasm for joining one of the new Iraqi security institutions.

"No, I won't try to join the army again," he said, his head in a bandage. "There is no benefit in joining. I survived this today. But tomorrow, who knows what would happen to me?"

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