The seemingly coordinated explosions Thursday struck throughout the peak of morning rush hour, hitting variety of Baghdad's primarily mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. 9 automobile bombs, six roadside bombs and a mortar spherical all went off in an exceedingly two-hour amount, targeting residential, industrial and government districts within the Iraqi capital, police said.
"The series of special invasions launched, below the steerage of the Ministry of War within the Islamic State of Iraq, to support the weak Sunnis within the prisons of the apostates and to retaliate for the captives who were executed," the cluster said on an al Qaeda web site.
Iraq's leadership is dominated by Shiite Muslims, together with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The country's Sunni minority held power below former leader Saddam Hussein.
Bloodshed in Baghdad
Iraq's future hinges on political crisis
Iraq when the withdrawal
A recent political crisis has raised fears of a come back of the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq that ripped the country apart at the peak of the war some years back.
On December nineteen, al-Maliki, a Shiite, ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice chairman, a move that escalated sectarian tensions and threatened to collapse Iraq's fragile power-sharing government.
The political turmoil also because the recent spate of violence erupted simply days when the ultimate U.S. troops withdrew.
Violence in Iraq has declined in recent years however last week's attacks were among the worst since August when a series of coordinated bombings killed a minimum of seventy five folks in seventeen Iraqi cities.
