A wave of attacks across Iraq including five car bombs, three as prayers finished at Shiite mosques in Baghdad, killed 58 people on Friday, just days after the government said al-Qaeda was on the run.
The violence underscored the unrest that continues to plague a nation whose politicians are struggling to form a national government almost seven weeks after a general election seen crucial to its long-term stability.
Two parked car bombs in the impoverished district of Sadr City killed 39 people and wounded 45, a security official said.
PHOTO: EPA
The first exploded near the political office of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose Sadrist political movement could well turn out to be the kingmaker of the next government. The second blast occurred near a busy market.
Sadr himself is in self-imposed exile in Iran, but the lunchtime attacks led a Sadrist official to urge the movement’s dormant Mehdi army militia to protect mosques.
“I am confirming that this is a call from Moqtada al-Sadr for the Mehdi army to take responsibility to guard and protect the mosques by cooperating with the security forces,” cleric Hazim al-Araji said on Sharqiya television.
A third parked car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in al-Ameen district in the east of the capital, killing eight people and wounded 13 as worshippers headed out after prayers finished, the security official said.
Earlier, at Abdel Hadi al-Chalabi mosque, named after the father of former deputy prime minister Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite, a car bomb killed five people and wounded 14.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks in Baghdad, but the tightly timed sequence of destruction bore the hallmark of al-Qaeda.
A total of 115 people were wounded in the five car bombs and two other attacks, the official said.
The violence in the capital followed early morning attacks in Al-Anbar, a Sunni Arab province west of Baghdad, where an anti-terror judge’s home was targeted and four explosions killed six people.
The judge, who recently sentenced three insurgents to 15 years in jail, escaped unharmed, but two of his sons were injured.
The conflict-wracked country held parliamentary elections on March 7, the second such vote since Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was ousted in a US-led invasion in 2003. Maliki narrowly lost to his main challenger, former premier Iyad Allawi.
Allawi won 91 seats to Maliki’s 89, but neither came close to the 163 seats needed to form a government on their own, ushering in weeks of as yet fruitless haggling to put together a ruling coalition in the 325-seat parliament.
The political stalemate, which will be further protracted given a decision last week to hold a manual recount of ballots cast in Baghdad, comes as the US moves steadily towards a military exit from Iraq.
US President Barack Obama pledged last year to withdraw all combat troops by August 31, ahead of a complete withdrawal of soldiers by the end of next year.
There are currently around 95,000 US troops in Iraq, and the political impasse is a major concern for Washington as its withdrawal foresees the number of soldiers falling to 50,000 by the August deadline.
General Ray Odierno, the US military’s top commander in Iraq, has said that next month would be key for the planned pullout, as the speed of the exit strategy must increase around that time if it is to stay on track.
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