Iraq Hit By Wave Of Bomb Attacks, Killing Dozens
Source: Associated Press
BAGHDAD (AP) A wave of car bombings rocked central and northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 39 people and extending the deadliest eruption of violence to hit the country in years.
Attackers initially targeted market-goers early in the morning, then turned their sights on police posts after sunset. Security forces scrambled to contain the violence, blocking a key road in central Iraq and imposing a curfew in the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Mosul after the blasts went off.
Killing in Iraq has spiked to levels not seen since 2008. The surge in bloodshed, which follows months of protests by the country's Sunni Arab minority against the Shiite-led government, is raising fears that Iraq is heading for another bout of uncontrollable sectarian violence.
The upsurge comes as foreign fighters are increasingly pouring into neighboring Syria, where a grueling civil war has taken on sectarian overtones similar to those that pushed Iraq to the brink of its own civil war in 2006 and 2007.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/car-bombs-market-kill-10-central-iraq
Bosonic
(3,746 posts)(Reuters) - Car bombs, suicide attacks and gun battles in cities across northern Iraq killed nearly 40 people on Monday in worsening unrest that has heightened fears of a return to sectarian civil war.
No group claimed responsibility for the series of attacks, but officials blame most of the violence that has killed nearly 2,000 people since April on Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda's local wing.
Growing violence has accompanied rising political tensions between Iraq's majority Shi'ite leaders and the Sunni community, who believe they have been marginalised since the fall of Saddam Hussein after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Early on Monday, two car bombs exploded and a suicide bomber in another vehicle detonated his explosives in a food market in the mostly Shi'ite Muslim town of Jadidat al-Shatt in Diyala province, 40 km (25 miles) north of the capital.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/uk-iraq-violence-idUKBRE9590YK20130610
Bosonic
(3,746 posts)BAGHDAD (AFP) - A wave of attacks on Monday, mostly against Sunni areas of Iraq, killed 70 people in renewed bloodshed that, coupled with widespread political paralysis, has revived fears of all-out sectarian war.
The violence, which left more than 230 people wounded, came after several days of relative calm following symbolic moves by Iraq's political leaders to ease tensions among the country's communities after the UN warned violence was ready to "explode".
But no tangible moves have been agreed to address underlying disputes that have fuelled months of protests among Iraq's Sunni community and, analysts say, given militant groups fuel and room to manoeuvre.
No group has claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, but Sunni militants linked to Al-Qaeda have previously attacked security forces and fellow Sunnis, ostensibly in a bid to provoke retributive violence against Iraq's Shiite community.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/17546031/new-wave-of-iraq-attacks-kills-70/
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)I'm starting to think these are just different fronts in the same war.