Blasts kill at least 67 in Baghdad
Several bombs go off in mainly Shia Muslim areas of the Iraqi capital Baghdad leaving at least 67 people dead and many injured. The attacks come as sectarian tensions escalate in Iraq.
The biggest attack on Thursday came from a suicide bomber at a police checkpoint west of Nassiriya in the south of Baghdad, where 38 people were killed and another 70 injured, according to Qusay al-Abadi, head of the local provincial council. Among the dead were many Shia pilgrims.
In the Shia area of Sadr City another two bombs, on a motorbike and at a roadside, killed 10 and wounded 37.
One police officer at the scene of the Sadr City explosion, who declined to be named, said: “There was a group of day labourers gathered, waiting to be hired for work. Someone brought his small motorcycle and parked it nearby. A few minutes later it blew up, killed some people, wounded others and burned some cars.”
Building tools and shoes ‘scattered across the site’
Reuters reported that there were blood stains all around the site of the motorcycle bomb attack and that tarmac on the road had been ripped up by the explosion. Building tools and shoes were scattered across the site.
There are fears in Iraq and among the international community that sectarian strife is escalating between Sunni and Shia Muslims. The Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki caused controversy when he tried to remove two senior Sunni politicians just as US troops withdraw from Iraq in December.
Maliki has been trying to arrest Sunni Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges that he organised assassinations and bombings, and has also been pressing parliament to fire the Sunni deputy, Seleh al-Mutlaq, for likening Maliki to Saddam Hussein.
On Tuesday, members of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc boycotted Iraq’s parliament and cabinet, accusing Maliki and his team of governing alone in a power-sharing coalition that was supposed to ease sectarian tensions.
Sunnis fear that the prime minister wants to consolidate Shia control over the country. Iraq’s Sunni minority feel marginalised since the rise of the Shia majority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
Bombings show ‘failures’ of Obama presidency
On 22 December there was another multi-bomb attack in Baghdad, killing around 63 people and wounded another 200. Nearly all the bombs were in mainly Shia neighbourhoods, although one roadside bomb killed one and wonded five near a Sunni area, Adhamiya.
President Obama’s opponents have accused him of leaving a dangerous vacuum in Iraq. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said: “The president’s failure to secure an agreement and maintain 10,000 to 30,000 troops in Iraq has to be one of his signature failures.”