BAGHDAD – A series of bombs targeting Shia areas rocked Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 56 people in an apparent backlash after Iraq talked up a series of blows against a weakened al-Qaeda-led insurgency.
Eight people were also killed by bombs in the Sunni west of the country, less than a week after Iraqi security forces backed by US troops killed al-Qaeda’s top two leaders in Iraq. Thirteen blasts hit different areas of the Iraqi capital around the time of Muslim prayers, mostly near Shia mosques and at a marketplace, an Iraqi interior ministry source said.
Three bombs targeted worshippers outside the main office of fiery anti-US Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the crowded Sadr City slum. The blasts killed 39 people and wounded 56, generating denunciations of the security forces. Some youths threw stones at an Iraqi army vehicle.
“Why do they always target us? We are peaceful people. We come to pray and then go on our way,” one angry survivor said without identifying himself.
The attacks, constituting one of Iraq’s deadliest episodes in recent weeks, also wounded about 120 people and signalled the possibility of a rise in violence after a March national election produced no clear winner and left a power vacuum for insurgents to exploit.
“Targeting prayers in areas with a certain majority is a revenge for the losses suffered by al-Qaeda. We expect such terrorist acts to continue,” Baghdad security spokesman Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi said, referring to Iraq’s Shia Muslim majority.
Last Sunday, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of its affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, were killed in a raid in a rural area northwest of Baghdad by Iraqi and US forces.
The strike against al-Qaeda leaders has been accompanied by lesser victories where more than 300 suspected al-Qaeda operatives have been arrested and 19 killed, US and Iraqi officials say.
In another attack yesterday, 11 people were killed by a car bomb and a suicide bomber near a Shia mosque in al-Ameen district in southeastern Baghdad. A car bomb killed five near a mosque in the northwestern neighbourhood of al-Hurriya, police said.
“These are acts of revenge that are intended to send a message to the Iraqi government and the world that al-Qaeda’s existence will not be affected by the killing of specific leaders,” political analyst Hameed Fadhel of Baghdad University said. “They want to say that they are still here.”
Earlier, seven members of one family were killed in a series of blasts in Khalidiya, a town in Iraq’s turbulent western province of Anbar, 83km (50 miles) west of Baghdad. One police officer died trying to defuse a bomb.
The mainly Sunni province of Anbar has been quiet since tribal leaders in 2006 started turning on Sunni Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, who once dominated it. But insurgents continue to operate in the vast desert province.
“At four in the morning, I heard a movement behind my house and found some barrels nearby, so I took my family out of the house,” said Fadhil Salih, a judge at the Khalidiya courthouse.
“An hour later the bomb went off and destroyed my house but, thank God, there were no casualties in my family,” Mr Salih said.
At least 10 people were wounded, including two policemen. Iraqi officials say they have been expecting revenge attacks after the victories against al-Qaeda in the past month. Violence has fallen in the last two years as the sectarian bloodshed that followed the 2003 US-led invasion faded, but tensions were stoked by last month’s election.
Shia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bloc came a close second to a cross-sectarian alliance backed by the once-dominant minority Sunni community.
Mr Maliki’s allies are attempting to capture the lead through a recount of votes in Baghdad and court challenges to winning candidates because of alleged ties to Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath Party. – (Reuters)