At 7.13am the schoolgirls inside, aged 14 and 15 and dressed in black uniforms with white headscarves, had been on their way to Al Amjad intermediate school for girls when a Chevrolet saloon drove past.

The car would have attracted little attention as it approached the station's front gate. Seconds later it blew up, flinging a fireball of metal and other debris across the street.

Three minutes later a second car bomb ripped into another police station in central Basra, followed five minutes later by a third in the port's historic old town.

In Zubair, a small shrine town 15 miles south of Basra, another suicide bomber was planning his final mission. At 8.20am he blew up his car outside the front door of Zubair's police training academy.

At 9.46am another bomber turned up at the same building driving round the side. He ran away before blowing up his car, injuring two more British soldiers.

By midday Basra's governor, Wael Abdul-Latif, was blaming al-Qaida and its Jordanian lieutenant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as former Ba'ath party supporters of Saddam Hussein.

Amid the carnage outside Zubair's police academy, investigators found the remains of the suicide bomber - including his head. He was bearded, lending credence to the theory that the blasts were the work of radical Islamists, possibly foreign, rather than secular supporters of the old regime.

The bomber was also wearing Arab dress, witnesses said. "I saw the body and the person had a dish dash," Ali Al Basari, a witness, told the Guardian. "But the body and his clothes were destroyed. There was nothing in his pockets."

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The bombers, driving identical Chevrolet saloon cars, struck three police stations in the centre of Basra at around 7.15am.

Last night Iraqi officials said they were interrogating one suicide bomber who had failed to blow himself up.