Baghdad blasts kill 63 as Iraq tensions rise

The apparently coordinated bombings were the first sign of a violent backlash against Shiite Muslim Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's move to sideline two Sunni Muslim rivals, raising the risk of a relapse into the sort of sectarian bloodletting that drove Iraq to the brink of civil war a few years ago.

At least 18 people were killed when a suicide bomber driving an ambulance detonated the vehicle near a government office in Baghdad's Karrada district, sending up a dust cloud and scattering car parts into a kindergarten, according to police and health officials.

“We heard the sound of a car driving, then car brakes, then a huge explosion, all our windows and doors are blown out, black smoke filled our apartment,” said Maysoun Kamal, who lives in a Karrada compound.

In total at least 63 people were killed and 194 were wounded in more than ten explosions across Baghdad, security and police sources said. Most of the targeted districts were Shiite.

Iraqi officials quickly branded the attacks a political message sent during the current crisis.

“The timing of these crimes and the places where they were carried out confirm to all ... the political nature of the targets,” Maliki said in a statement.

Two roadside bombs struck the southwestern Amil district, killing at least seven people and wounding 21 others, while a car bomb blew up in a Shiite neighbourhood in Doura in the south, killing three people and wounding six, police said.

More bombs ripped into the central Alawi area, Shaab and Shula in the north, all mainly Shiite areas, and a roadside bomb killed one and wounded five near the Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya, police said.

An old woman wrapped in black was yelling and calling for her husband lost under the rubble after two bombs struck a wholesale vegetable market where they both worked.

“I cannot find my husband, I don't know if they took him out or not, I don't know,” she said.

Violence in Iraq has ebbed since the height of sectarian slaughter in 2006-2007, when suicide bombers and hit squads targeted Sunni and Shiite communities in continual attacks that killed thousands of people.

Iraq is still fighting a stubborn, lower-grade insurgency with Sunni Islamists tied to al-Qaida and Shiite militias, who U.S. officials say are backed by Iran, staging daily attacks.

“We live in complicated circumstances, a complicated political scene and there is a conspiracy on Iraq from within,” Baghdad security operations spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi said.

The last few thousand American troops left Iraq over the weekend, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Many Iraqis had said they feared a return to sectarian violence without a U.S. military buffer.

Just days after the withdrawal, Iraq's fragile power-sharing government is grappling with its worst turmoil since its formation a year ago. Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs share out government posts in a unwieldy system that has been impaired by political infighting since it began.

This week, Maliki called for the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges he organized assassinations and bombings, and he asked parliament to fire his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlaq after he likened Maliki to Saddam.

Hashemi, who has denied the accusations, has taken refuge in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region where he is unlikely to be handed over to the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

The moves against the senior Sunni leaders have fanned sectarian fires anew because Sunnis fear the prime minister wants to consolidate Shiite domination over the country.

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