A suicide bomber targeting Shiite pilgrims in southern Iraq killed 30 people, just hours after a wave of bombings hit Shiite areas in Baghdad and killed 27 others, officials said.
The coordinated attacks targeting Shiites bore the hallmarks of Sunni insurgents linked to al-Qaeda and added to a deepening sectarian crisis in Iraq that exploded just as soon as the last Americans troops left in mid-December. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The wave of attacks began early in the morning when explosions struck two Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, killing at least 27 people. A few hours later, a suicide attack hit Shiite pilgrims heading to the holy Shiite city of Karbala, said provincial official Quosay al-Abadi. The explosions took place near Nasiriyah, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad. Hospital officials confirmed the causalities.
Baghdad military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the aim of the attacks is “to create sedition among the Iraqi people.” He said it was too early to say who was behind the bombings. The new violence will only exacerbate the country’s political crisis pitting politicians from the Shiite majority who dominate the government against the Sunni minority which reigned supreme under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government has issued an arrest warrant for the country’s top Sunni politician last month. The Sunni official, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, is currently holed up in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north – effectively out of reach of state security forces. Fears have already been running high that the sectarian tensions could re-ignite Shiite-Sunni warfare that just a few years ago pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
The attacks began in Baghdad with the explosion of a bomb attached to a motorcycle near a bus stop where day laborers gather to look for work in the Shiite Sadr city neighborhood. One of those who witnessed the attack said it filled the area with thick black smoke. “People have real fears that the cycle of violence might be revived in this country,” said Tariq Annad, a 52-year-old government employee who lives nearby.
That attack was followed by the explosion of a roadside bomb. Police found a third bomb nearby and defused it. The two Sadr City blasts killed 12 people, according to police and medical officials. Less than two hours later, two explosions rocked the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah in the north of the capital, killing 15 people.
Officials said the Kazimiyah blasts occurred almost simultaneously, with at least one caused by a car bomb.