14 Blasts in Coordinated Attack on Baghdad Kills 63

At least 63 killed in co-ordinated Baghdad attacks

BAGHDAD (AFP/BBC News) – Four car-bombs and 10 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were detonated, officials told the BBC. A security spokesman in Baghdad, Maj-Gen Qassim Atta, said the attackers had not aimed at security targets.

“They targeted children’s schools, day workers and the anti-corruption agency,” he told the AFP news agency.

Iraq’s year-old power-sharing government is in turmoil after an arrest warrant was issued for Sunni Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi on terror charges. The entire al-Iraqiyya group, the main Sunni bloc in parliament, is boycotting the assembly in protest. It accuses Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shia, of monopolising power.

Mr Hashemi denies the charges. He is currently in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, under the protection of the regional government, but Mr Maliki has demanded that they give him up.

« click for more photo’s
Baghdad after a series of blasts killed and wounded scores of people. (Hadi Mizban/Reuters)

OBAMA SAYS SITUATION NOT PERFECT

President Barack Obama acknowledged that the situation was not perfect, but said the US forces were leaving behind “a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government elected by its people”.

Baghdad explosions kill, injure more than 200 in first major violence since political crisis

Wave of bombings come amid renewed fears of sectarian strife

(Al-Jazeera) – At least 57 people died and 176 people were wounded in 12 bombings across the Iraqi capital on Thursday morning, health ministry sources told Al Jazeera.

The wave of bombings come amid renewed fears of sectarian strife following the withdrawal of US troops and a deepening political crisis over an arrest warrant issued for Tariq al-Hashimi, the country’s vice president and most senior Sunni politician.

The attacks largely coincided with the morning rush hour, and security forces cordoned off bomb sites, AFP news agency correspondents and officials said.

Iraqi officials said the bombs struck in the Allawi, Bab al-Muatham and Karrada districts of central Baghdad, the Adhamiyah, Shuala and Shaab neighbourhoods in the north, Jadriyah in the east, Ghazaliyah in the west and al-Amil and Dura in the south.

The largest explosion took place near the Rahbaat (Sisters) hospital and the Integrity and Transparency Directorate in Karrada district, sources told Al Jazeera. The blast caused great material damage and the bodies of those killed were laid out in the streets, eyewitnesses said.

Violence in Iraq has ebbed since the height of sectarian fighting in 2006-2007 when suicide bombers and hit-squads targeted Sunni and Shia communities in attacks that killed thousands and pushed the country to the edge of civil war.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki Puts Power-Sharing at Risk in Iraq

(NY TImes) – In a nearly 90-minute news conference broadcast on tape-delay, Mr. Maliki defied his rivals and pushed back on all fronts in Iraq’s deepening political crisis, threatening to release investigatory files that he claimed implicated his opponents in terrorism.

He also threatened the Kurds, valuable allies with close ties to the Americans, warning that there would be “problems” if they protected Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who fled to the semiautonomous Kurdish region in recent days to escape an arrest warrant on charges that he ran a death squad responsible for assassinations and bombings.

The escalating political crisis underscores the divisions among Iraq’s three main factions — Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — that were largely papered over while the American military maintained a presence here. The crisis also lays bare the myriad problems left behind with the final departure of American troops: sectarianism, a judiciary that the populace views as beholden to one man and a political culture with no space for compromise.