Bombs kill 50 on Iraq invasion anniversary
19 March, 2013
BAGHDAD: A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shia Muslim districts across Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda are regaining ground in Iraq, invigorated by the war next door in Syria and have stepped up attacks on Shia targets in an attempt to provoke a wider sectarian confrontation.
One car bomb exploded in a busy Baghdad market, three detonated in the Shia district of Sadr City and another near the entrance of the heavily fortified Green Zone that sent a plume of dark smoke into the air alongside the River Tigris.
A suicide bomber in a truck attacked a police base in a Shia town south of the capital, officials said. "I was driving my taxi and suddenly I felt my car rocked. Smoke was all around. I saw two bodies on the ground. People were running and shouting everywhere," said Ali Radi, a taxi driver caught in one of the blasts in Baghdad's Sadr City.
A decade after US and Western troops swept Saddam from power, Iraq still struggles with insurgents, sectarian friction and political feuds among Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions who share power in the government.
In a sign of concern over security, the cabinet on Tuesday postponed local elections in two provinces, Anbar and Nineveh, for up to six months because of threats to electoral workers and violence there, according to Maliki's media adviser Ali al-Moussawi. The polls will go ahead elsewhere on April 20. No group claimed responsibility for the Baghdad blasts, but Islamic State of Iraq, a wing of al Qaeda, has vowed to take back ground lost in its war with US troops.
This year the group has carried out a string of high-profile attacks. Violence is still below the bloody height of the sectarian slaughter that killed tens of thousands after Sunni Islamists bombed the Shia Al Askari shrine in 2006, provoking a wave of retaliation by Shia militias.
But security officials say al Qaeda's local wing is regrouping in the vast desert of Anbar province bordering Syria and suicide bombers have carried out attacks nearly twice a week since January, a rate not seen for several years in Iraq. Further complicating security, thousands of Sunni protesters are also rallying in Anbar against Maliki, whose Shia-led government they accuse of marginalising their minority sect since the fall of Sunni strongman Saddam.
Syria's war next door is also whipping up Iraq's volatile mix. Iraq is exposed to a regional tussle for influence between Turkey, which backs Sunni rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad, and Shia Iran, the Syrian leader's main ally. After Operation Iraqi Freedom promised to liberate the Iraqi people, Iraq has struggled with a decade that drove the country into sectarian mayhem which killed tens of thousands and turmoil of a young democracy emerging out of dictatorship.
Since the last election in 2010, Maliki's Sunni and Kurdish critics have accused him of consolidating his own authority, abusing his control of the security forces to pressure foes and failing to live up to a power-sharing deal.
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