Attacks leave 6 dead in Baghdad

Al-Qaida-spawned sect claims blast that killed 33 Friday

Burned vehicles litter a stadium area in Baghdad on Saturday after Friday’s bomb attack on a Shiite campaign rally.

Burned vehicles litter a stadium area in Baghdad on Saturday after Friday’s bomb attack on a Shiite campaign rally.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

BAGHDAD - Two attacks killed at least six people Saturday in the Iraqi capital, where police also discovered nine bodies, some of them riddled with bullets, officials said.

The bloodshed came a day after a coordinated bomb attack on a campaign rally for a militant Shiite group killed at least 33 people, fueling fears that Iraq’s already simmering sectarian tensions will boil over into retaliatory violence just days before parliamentary elections.

An al-Qaida breakaway group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, claimed responsibility for Friday’s bombings at the Baghdad rally, which about 10,000 backers of Asaib Ahl al-Haq attended. The Islamic State said on a militant website that the attacks were to avenge what it called the killing of Sunnis and their forced removal from their homes by Shiite militias.

The authenticity of the claim could not be verified.

On Saturday, the leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq said one member who was to contest Wednesday’s parliamentary elections was killed in the attack and that his group’s security forces killed two suicide bombers before they could detonate their explosives.

“The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant considers the Asaib Ahl al-Haq as its enemy, and that’s an honor for us,” Qais al-Khazali said at a news conference. “Our blood will not have been shed in vain, and what happened will not go unpunished.”

Al-Khazali was held for years by the U.S. military in Iraq before he was handed over to the Shiite-led government. A onetime close aide to anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, he is blamed for planning a series of attacks against U.S. forces, including a kidnapping in 2007 of American soldiers in Karbala, a holy Shiite city south of Baghdad.

A senior Asaib Ahl al-Haq official said the 33 dead included 10 group members who had fought in the Syrian civil war. Members of the Iranian-backed group, like Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah, have been fighting with forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, a member of an offshoot Shiite sect. The Islamic State fights with Sunni rebels trying to oust Assad.

Bomb attacks are not uncommon in Iraq, but targeting a gathering by a militant Shiite group raises the stakes in Iraq’s Sunni-Shiite rivalry.

Several hours after the Baghdad bombing Friday, a senior Sunni politician in the mostly Shiite southern city of Basra was shot dead in what appeared to be a revenge attack.

Police on Saturday found nine bodies, some bullet-riddled, in several Sunni and Shiite districts of the Iraqi capital, security officials said. The bodies could not be immediately identified.

Other bodies have been found in similar attacks reminiscent of the worst days of Iraq’s sectarian violence between 2006 and 2008.

Also on Saturday, gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on a group of civilians in the al-Amil neighborhood of western Baghdad, killing two people and wounding three. The security officials said the shooting took place in one of al-Amil’s Sunni sections.

In the afternoon, police said a bomb exploded inside a small restaurant in the mostly Shiite al-Nasir district in the eastern suburbs of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 11.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures from the attacks.

Last year, the death toll in Iraq climbed to its highest levels since the violence between 2006 and 2008. The United Nations said 8,868 people were killed in 2013, and more than 1,400 people were killed in the first two months of this year alone.

Friday’s rally was held under heavy security, with hundreds of the group’s militiamen and veterans of the Syria war in charge. The 10 Syria war veterans killed were among scores of militiamen in green military fatigues patrolling the rally, said the Asaib Ahl al-Haq official.

He and other officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to journalists.

The rally was held to introduce Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s candidates for Wednesday’s election, but a speech given by al-Khazali carried heavy sectarian undertones with ominous threats.

More than 9,000 candidates are taking part in Wednesday’s election, the fourth such vote since Saddam Hussein’s 2003 overthrow, and will vie for 328 seats in parliament. Parts of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province won’t take part in the election because of the violence there.

Information for this article was contributed by Qassim Abdul-Zahra of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 11 on 04/27/2014