Days after the US withdrawal from Iraq, a series of blasts kill at least 63 people in the first big attack on Baghdad since a crisis erupted between the Shia-led government and Sunni rivals.
The apparently coordinated attacks are the first sign of rising violence since Iraq’s Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved to sideline Sunni rivals, just a few years after sectarian slaughter drove the country to the edge of civil war.
The last US troops withdrew on Sunday, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Yet within days Iraq’s fragile power-sharing government is grappling with its worst turmoil since its formation a year ago.
Maliki, a Shia, is seeking the arrest of Sunni Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges that he organised assassinations and bombings, and he wants parliament to fire his Sunni deputy, Saleh al-Mutlaq, after he likened Maliki to Saddam.
The move against the senior Sunni leaders are stirring sectarian tensions as Sunnis fear the prime minister wants to consolidate Shia control. Iraq’s Sunni minority feel marginalised since the rise of the Shia majority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
Two roadside bombs struck Baghdad’s south western Amil district on Thursday, killing at least seven people and wounding 21 others, while a car bomb blew up in a Shia neighbourhood in Doura in the south, killing three people and wounding six, security sources said.
More bombs ripped into the central Alawi area, the commercial Karrada neighbourhood, Shaab and Shula in the north – all are mainly Shia areas.
One roadside bomb killed one and wounded five near the Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya, police and witnesses said.
Almost 200 people have been wounded in the blasts.
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“I saw all the windows were blown out and glass scattered everywhere. The children were scared and crying,” said Raghad Khalid, a teacher at a primary school. “Some parts of the car bomb are inside our building.”
Smoke hung over the blast site in Karrada as ambulances rushed in to ferry the wounded to hospital.
Violence in Iraq has ebbed since the height of sectarian slaughter in 2006-2007, when suicide bombers and hit squads targeted Sunni and Shi’ite communities in attacks that killed thousands and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
Thursday’s attacks were the first major offensive in Baghdad since November when three bombs exploded in a commercial Baghdad district and another blast hit the city’s western outskirts on Saturday, killing at least 13 people.
In October, bomb attacks on a busy commercial street in northeastern Baghdad killed at least 30, with scores wounded.
Iraq is fighting a stubborn insurgency with Sunni Islamists tied to al-Qaeda. Shia militias, who US officials say are backed by Iran, still stage daily attacks.
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