Two car bombs struck a Shiite district in Baghdad yesterday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens, officials said, as sectarian tensions rose following a rampage by Shiite gunmen killed 41 people, most of them Sunnis.
The violence began when a car parked near a repair shop on the edge of the Shiite slum of Sadr City blew up, followed within minutes by a suicide car bomber who drove into the crowd that had gathered near the site.
Hospital officials said at least eight people were killed and 41 wounded in the blast. AP Television News footage showed the devastated repair shop with a crumpled roof and the blackened hulks of cars on the street outside.
A roadside bomb also struck a police patrol near a restaurant elsewhere in eastern Baghdad, wounding three policemen, police Lieutenant Ahmed Qassim said.
And a bomb exploded in the Shurja market in central Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 18, police Colonel Adnan al-Obeidi said.
In Kirkuk, a suicide truck bomb struck an office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the main Kurdish political parties in Iraq, killing five people and wounding 12 others, police Brigadier Sarhat Qadir said.
A police patrol in the predominantly Shiite city of Hillah, about 95km south of Baghdad, also hit a roadside bomb, leaving one policeman dead and four wounded, army Captain Hassim al-Khafaji said.
A bomb also struck a gasoline station in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, wounding 10 people, while another bomb struck a police patrol in Baqubah, wounding five policemen and eight civilians.
However, the streets in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad were calm yesterday after the deadly rampage the day before by Shiite gunmen, who dragged Sunnis from their cars, picked them out on the street and killed them.
Police said 41 people were killed, although there were conflicting figures that went as low as nine.
Some Sunni clerics put the death toll at more than 50 in Jihad, a once prosperous neighborhood of handsome villas owned by officials of former president Saddam Hussein's security services.
Sunni leaders expressed outrage over the killings, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, appealed for calm, warning that the nation stood "in front of a dangerous precipice."
Ayad al-Samaraie, a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, blamed members of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia for the killings on Sunday.
He also called on the UN Security Council to send peacekeepers to Iraq, saying yesterday that US-led "occupation forces" cannot protect Iraqis.
The head of the bloc Adnan al-Dulaimi also called on the Shiite-led government to stop the militias from carrying out violence.
"The gangs want to pave the way for sectarian strife,'' he told reporters. "The attacking of Sunnis in Jihad and other places in Baghdad is aimed at weakening the Sunnis and driving them from Baghdad."
Al-Sadr denied responsibility on Sunday and called on both Shiites and Sunnis to "join hands for the sake of Iraq's independence and stability."
He assured Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, leader of the largest Sunni Arab party, that he would punish any of his militiamen if they were involved.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has promised to disband Shiite militias and other armed groups, which are blamed for much of the sectarian violence, but they have flourished in large part because of the inability of the police, the Iraqi army and coalition forces to guarantee security.
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