BAGHDAD — A wave of bombings killed at least 72 people in Baghdad on Thursday, the first attacks since Iraq’s Shiite-led government was engulfed in a crisis that risks fracturing the country along sectarian and ethnic lines.
At least 18 people were killed when a suicide bomber driving an ambulance detonated the vehicle near a government office in Baghdad’s mostly Shiite Karrada district, sending up a huge smoke 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,” said Maysoun Kamal, who lives in a Karrada compound.
“All our windows and doors are blown out, black smoke filled our apartment.”
Police and security sources said there were more than 10 explosions across Baghdad, mostly targeting Shiite districts. A total of 217 people were wounded.
Iraqi officials linked the attacks to the current crisis.
“The timing of these crimes and the places where they were carried out confirm ... the political nature of the targets,” Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki said in a statement.
A senior US official however said Washington’s initial assessment was that the violence was probably the work of Al Qaeda.
“It has all the marks of Al Qaeda, targeting large concentrations of civilians and it could be that they are trying to exploit this by seeking to recreate the support that they had in the west and the north of the country,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The United States “stands with Iraq as a strategic partner and a close friend”, the White House said. “Attempts such as this to derail Iraq’s continued progress will fail.”
The last American troops left oil-producer Iraq earlier this week, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Many Iraqis had said they feared a return to sectarian violence without a US military buffer.
In the other Baghdad attacks, 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.
Further explosions struck the southwestern part of the capital late on Thursday, including a roadside bomb followed by a car bomb in Al Shurta Al Khamissa district and a parked car bomb in the Jihad area, police 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.
But the country is still fighting a stubborn, lower-grade insurgency waged by Sunni Islamists tied to Al Qaeda and Shiite militias who US officials say are backed by Iran.
No group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s bombings, but analysts said Iraq’s Al Qaeda affiliate was probably hitting Shiite targets, as in the past, to inflame sectarian conflict and show it was still capable of major attacks.
Just days after the US 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 organised 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 Kurdish region where he is unlikely to be handed over to the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
Maliki on Wednesday warned Sunni leaders they would be excluded from power if they walked out of the ruling coalition, even as senior US officials piled pressure on both sides for dialogue to end the crisis.
