Gunmen stormed a police station and bombed a Shia mosque in two simultaneous dawn attacks in Baghdad on Friday which killed at least 30 Iraqis and injured several.
Dozens of prisoners were freed and weapons were looted from the police station, a brazen show of strength by the insurgents. Shortly afterwards guerrillas attacked at least two police stations in the northern city of Mosul.
The attacks marked the most serious day of violence in Iraq for some weeks and raised the spectre of sectarian clashes.
Although the US has largely completed its operation against guerrillas in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the insurgency appears to remain a considerable force in large areas of Iraq.
The first attack began with a mortar fired at the Hameed al-Najar Shia mosque in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of Baghdad known to be a refuge for many insurgents, towards the end of dawn prayers.
A crowd swiftly gathered to help the injured and then a suicide car bomber ploughed into the group, killing 14 and injuring 19.
Several cars were destroyed by the blast and shop windows shattered.
”The first blast happened just as worshippers were leaving the mosque after dawn prayers,” a witness told Reuters. ”Everyone in the area rushed to help them. Then a few minutes later a car blew up the whole crowd.”
US fighter jets and Apache helicopters fired at targets in Adhamiya after the attack.
There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing, although a Sunni militant group loyal to the Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it had attacked a police station in Adhamiya.
Since the invasion last year there have been sectarian attacks on Iraq’s Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and Christian populations, but until now they have been limited. Yesterday’s bombing was unusually brutal in its sectarian targeting.
Many fear that if the Sunni minority boycotts the elections next month, then sectarian tension could raise the violence to a new level.
In the second attack yesterday several carloads of gunmen drove in before dawn to the troubled Seydiya district of western Baghdad, near the airport road, on which US military convoys and western contractors are frequent targets
They set up checkpoints and then fired mortars into the neighbourhood police station, before storming the building.
At least 11 police officers were killed and six injured.
The gunmen forced their way into the building, stole weapons, freed 50 prisoners and then set fire to two police trucks parked outside.
Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hutton, a US military spokesperson, said the gunmen had arrived in 11 cars to attack the station with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The Zarqawi militant group claimed responsibility in a statement posted on the internet. ”The lions of al-Qaeda in Iraq attacked the headquarters of the apostates who sold their religion, honour and land, and attacked the Seydiya police station, killing everyone inside except for two who fled,” it said.
”The destructive effect that such operations has on the morale of the enemy inside and on its countries and people abroad is clear.”
It was the first time a police station has been stormed in the capital, raising serious concern about security less than two months before the elections.
The group has claimed responsibility for similar attacks, and for kidnappings and beheadings, including the murder of the British contract worker Ken Bigley.
Further north in Mosul, insurgents fired mortars into a US base and later fought gun battles with US and Iraqi troops. Two police stations were attacked and at least one police officer was killed. Officials said 11 insurgents had died in the fighting.
Mosul has had a wave of attacks, the apparent fallout of the US assault on of Falluja.
President Bush has asked Donald Rumsfeld to remain defence secretary in his second term. Rumsfeld had come under pressure because of the mounting US deaths in Iraq and the spreading insurgency. – Guardian Unlimited Â