Explosions kill 80 in Iraq; French consulate hit
10 September, 2012
BAGHDAD: At least 80 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Sunday, including a car bomb outside a French consulate.
Iraq's conflict has eased since its height in 2006-2007 when sectarian slaughter killed thousands. But Sunni militants and an al Qaeda affiliate still launch about one major attack a month in an effort to re-ignite tensions between the Shia and the Sunni following the US military withdrawal in December.
The most serious of the bombings, blasts and shootings on Sunday happened near the city of Amara, 300km south of Baghdad, when two car bombs exploded outside a Shia shrine and a market place, killing at least 16 people, officials said. "So far 16 corpses were brought to the hospital, and more than 100 people were wounded," said Sayid Hasnain, a local health official.
With its main hospital overflowing with injured from the attacks, mosques in Amara used prayer loudspeakers to call for blood donations. Overnight in Dujail, 50km north of Baghdad, gunmen and a suicide bomber driving a car attacked a military base, killing 11 soldiers and injuring seven, police said.
Later on Sunday, a car bomb killed eight people queuing for jobs as police guards for the Iraqi North Oil Company in the flashpoint city of Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad, police said.
Kirkuk was hit by several other blasts. A car bomb and a bomb packed into a motorcycle detonated outside a crime investigation office, killing seven and wounding 40. More people were killed in several other blasts across the country, including in the towns of Baquba, Samarra, Basra and Tuz Khurmato.
The car bomb that exploded outside the French consular building in the usually stable city of Nassiriya, 300km south of Baghdad, killed a police guard and wounded four other guards, authorities said. The consul, an Iraqi citizen, was not at the office at the time of the attack. Two other people were killed and three wounded by a separate car bomb in the city.
French diplomats have been hit before by violence in Iraq. In June last year, a French embassy convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in Baghdad that wounded seven local Iraqi guards, one month after another embassy convoy was hit by an explosive device. Since the last US troops left, insurgents have often hit high-profile targets, including Shia religious sites or local military or government offices, to show they can still carry out coordinated attacks and undermine the government's claim to provide security. Iraq's local al Qaeda wing, Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for other major attacks on security forces and Shia neighbourhoods. But former members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baathist party and other Sunni groups are also fighting the government.
When asked about the attacks on security forces, a security analyst said, "They may be focusing their efforts on the security forces to make them seem weak in the eyes of the people. When civilians think that police cannot protect them, they turn to other groups for support, such as Shia militia and even al Qaeda in some predominantly Sunni areas. The attacks are ultimately ‘likely aiming at polarising communities, which puts pressure on the security forces and may eventually lead to a rise in support for their (militants') cause'," he added.
Infighting in Iraq's delicate cross-sectarian government, and a resurgence of the al Qaeda wing, have raised fears of a return to widespread violence.
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