A series of bombings hit Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 63 people in the first big assault attack on Iraq’s capital since a sectarian crisis erupted within its government just days after the U.S. troop withdrawal. The apparently coordinated bombings were the first sign of a violent backlash against Shia Muslim Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s move to sideline two Sunni Muslim rivals, raising the risk of a relapse into the sort of sectarian bloodletting that drove Iraq to the brink of civil war a few years ago.
In total at least 63 people were killed and 194 were wounded in more than ten explosions across Baghdad, security and police sources said. Most of the targeted districts were Shia.
Iraqi officials quickly branded the attacks a political message sent during the current crisis. “The timing of these crimes and the places where they were carried out confirm to all… the political nature of the targets,” Maliki said in a statement.
Two roadside bombs struck the southwestern Amil district, while a car bomb blew up in a Shia neighborhood in Doura in the south. More bombs ripped into the central Alawi area, Shaab and Shula in the north, all mainly Shia areas, and a roadside bomb killed one and wounded five near the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya.
Iraq is still fighting a stubborn, lower-grade insurgency with Sunni Islamists tied to al Qaeda and Shia militias, who U.S. officials say are backed by Iran, staging daily attacks. The last few thousand American troops left Iraq over the weekend, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Many Iraqis had said they feared a return to sectarian violence without a U.S. military buffer.
Just days after the withdrawal, Iraq’s fragile power-sharing government is grappling with its worst turmoil since its formation a year ago. Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs share out government posts in a unwieldy system that has been impaired by political infighting since it began.
This week, Maliki called for the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges he organized assassinations and bombings, and he asked parliament to fire his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlaq after he likened Maliki to Saddam.
Hashemi, who has denied the accusations, has taken refuge in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region where he is unlikely to be handed over to the Shia-led government in Baghdad.
The moves against the senior Sunni leaders have fanned sectarian fires anew because Sunnis fear the prime minister wants to consolidate Shia domination over the country.
Iraq’s Sunni minority have felt marginalised since the rise of the Shia majority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Many Sunnis feel they have been shunted aside in the power-sharing agreement that Washington touts as a young democracy.
Thursday’s attacks were the first major assault in Baghdad since November, when three bombs exploded in a commercial district and another blast hit the city’s western outskirts on Saturday, killing at least 13 people.
