Nearly 400 people have been killed over the past three days in Iraq as insurgents and sectarian militias ripped through a massive United States security crackdown concentrated around Baghdad.
A series of coordinated bombings of Shi’ite marketplaces in and north of the capital defied a latest plea from embattled Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a joint effort to curb the bloodshed threatening to tear his country apart.
”The country is facing many challenges that need a consolidated front in which all Iraqis must participate,” Maliki said just hours before 125 people were killed in marketplace bombings in Baghdad and the Shi’ite town of Khalis.
Two suicide bombers tore through the market in the capital on Thursday, killing 82 men, women and children as they shopped before the evening curfew and in preparation for Friday, the Muslim day of rest.
The bombings in the al-Shaab district, close to the Shi’ite bastion of Sadr City, bore the hallmark of al-Qaeda-linked Sunni extremists waging sectarian attacks on Shi’ites in a bid to keep alive the brutal communal warfare.
The attacks are seen as the latest challenge to the Mahdi Army militia made up of impoverished Shi’ite youths who have led the counter-attack on Sunnis but who have recently melted away to escape the Baghdad crackdown.
The blasts came just days after former US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told his farewell news conference that violence had fallen by 25% in and around Baghdad since 80 000 Iraqi and US troops deployed under the new security plan.
Hours before the Baghdad bombings, a string of vehicle bombs, roadside bombs and mortar attacks killed another 43 people and wounded dozens in Khalis.
The restive town lies in Diyala province, which has become the most dangerous stretch of country outside the capital. Four coordinated car bombings and mortar attacks there struck a market, courthouse and a new army base.
As in Baghdad, the explosions unleashed mayhem, killing young and old indiscriminately as they shopped, in a favourite tactic of Sunni extremists bent on inflicting maximum civilian casualties.
On Tuesday, 160 Iraqis were slaughtered in the northern town of Tal Afar, 85 in a suicide truck bombing targeting a Shi’ite crowd waiting for food supplies and 75 Sunni men shot in a brutal vengeful killing spree.
Nearly 200 others were wounded in the bombing and 40 men remain missing after being dragged out of their homes at gunpoint in the shooting rampage.
In Iraq’s chilling sectarian conflict, many bodies are never found or taken to certification at city morgues, especially those who are kidnapped.
Another 23 bodies were discovered in the nearby northern city of Mosul on Friday, including the corpses of three police officers, said local police Major Samir Khalaf. At least another 25 bodies were found in Baghdad late on Thursday.
The government has vowed to take legal action against those responsible for the Tal Afar shootings but although Maliki has launched a probe into the killings, no details have since been provided.
A group of 13 police officers were initially detained for the bloody spree but were later freed by the Iraqi army deployed in the town.
Another 53 have been killed in random attacks across the country and five Americans have also been reported killed in the last three days.
The US military announced on Friday the latest death of a soldier in a roadside bomb attack in the capital.
The killing brought the US military’s losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3 243, according to the Pentagon, in a rising toll fuelling US domestic pressure on Washington to bring the forces home. — AFP
