BAGHDAD - A wave of attacks killed at least 95 people in Shiite and Sunni areas of Iraq on Monday, officials said, pushing the death toll over the past week to more than 240 and extending one of the most sustained bouts of sectarian violence the country has seen in years.
The bloodshed is still far shy of the pace, scale and brutality of 2006-2007, when Sunni and Shiite militias carried out retaliatory attacks against each other in a cycle of violence that left the country awash in blood. Still, Monday’s attacks, some of which hit markets and crowded bus stops during the morning rush hour, have heightened fears that the country could be turning back down the path toward civil war.
Sectarian tensions have been worsening since Iraq’s minority Sunnis began protesting what they say is mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government. The mass demonstrations, which began in December, have largely been peaceful, but the number of attacks rose sharply after a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq on April 23.
Iraq’s Shiite majority, which was oppressed under the late dictator Saddam Hussein, now holds the levers of power in the country. Shiites have largely restrained their militias over the past five years or so as Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaida have targeted them with occasional large-scale attacks.
But the renewed violence in both Shiite and Sunni areas since late last month has fueled concerns of a return to sectarian warfare. Monday marked the deadliest day in Iraq in more than 20 months and raised the nationwide death toll since last Wednesday to more than 240 people.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused militant groups of trying to exploit Iraq’s political instability to exacerbate sectarian tensions at home and blamed the recent spike in violence on the wider unrest in the region, particularly in neighboring Syria. At the same time, he pledged Monday that insurgents “will not be able to bring back the atmosphereof the sectarian war.”
Many Sunnis here contend that much of the country’s current turmoil is rooted in decisions made by al-Maliki’s government, saying his administration planted the seeds for more sectarian tension by becoming more aggressive toward Sunnis afterthe U.S. military withdrawal in December 2011.
The worst of Monday’s violence took place in Baghdad, where 10 car bombs ripped through open-air markets and other areas of Shiite neighborhoods, killing at least 48 people and wounding more than 150, police officials said. In the bloodiest attack, a parked car bomb blew up in a busy market in the northern Shiite neighborhood of Shaab, killing 14 and wounding 24, police and health officials said.
The surge in bloodshed has exasperated Iraqis, who have lived for years with the fear and uncertainty bred of random violence.
“How long do we have to continue living like this, with all the lies from the government?” asked 23-yearold Baghdad resident Malik Ibrahim. “Whenever they say they have reached a solution, the bombings come backstronger than before.”
“We’re fed up with them and we can’t tolerate this anymore.”
The predominantly Shiite city of Basra in southern Iraq also was hit Monday, with two car bombs there - one outside a restaurant and another at the city’s main bus station - killing at least 13 and wounded 40, according to provincial police spokesman Col. Abdul-Karim al-Zaidi and the head of city’s health directorate, Riadh Abdul-Amir.
A parked car bomb later struck Shiite worshippers as they were leaving a mosque in the southern city of Hillah, killing nine and wounding 26, according to police and health officials said.
In the town of Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded next to abus carrying Iranian pilgrims, killing 13 Iranians and one Iraqi, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but the fact that they all occurred in Shiite areas raised the suspicion that Sunni militants were involved. Also, Sunni insurgents, particularly al-Qaida in Iraq, are known to employ such largescale bombings.
Monday’s violence also struck Sunni areas, hitting the city of Samarra north of Baghdad and the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold and the birthplace of the protest movement.
A tribal leader in the province said there would be further attacks on security forces because the government had not responded to the demands of demonstrators.
“We will not accept the army in Anbar; this is out of the question,” said Muhammed Khamis Abu Risha, a fugitive former member of the Sunni Awakening, the fighters who were paid to switch sides and fight alongside the United States against al-Qaida before the U.S. pullback in late 2011. “The protest is not peaceful anymore, and we are ready for them. The coming days will not pass peacefully. We don’t want democracy anymore.”
A parked car bomb in Samarra went off near a gathering of pro-government Sunni militia who were waiting outside a military base to receive salaries, killing three and wounding 13, while in Anbar gunmen ambushed two police patrols near the town of Haditha, killing eight policemen, police and army officials said.
Also in Anbar, authorities found 13 bodies dumped in a remote desert area, officials said. The bodies, which included eight policemen who were kidnapped by gunmen on Friday, had been killed with a gunshot to the head.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The fighting has trapped civilians.
“Whenever we have hope and start to build our life again, whenever we feel healing from our wounds, a shock hits us and we feel that we lose again,” said Haider al-Musawi, 33, a shop owner who witnessed one of the bombings, at a market in Baghdad. “Iraq is never going to get better as long as we have those politicians that are not man enough tosay that we have failed.”
Al-Maliki said Monday that some Parliament members were to blame for the instability, alleging that they were exploiting sectarian passions for their own political interests. He also accused Sunni leaders of stoking the unrest.
“The sectarian speeches at the demonstration sites are giving the insurgents a reason to kill,” he said at a news conference.
Information for this article was contributed by Sinan Salaheddin and Nabil Al-Jurani of The Associated Press, and by Duraid Adnan of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 9 on 05/21/2013