Iraq violence leaves more than 100 dead

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/23/iraq-violence-dead

Version 0 of 1.

The most lethal series of attacks to hit Iraq in more than two years has killed at least 106 people and left the country in fear of a major offensive by a resurgent al-Qaida.

The co-ordinated bombings and assassinations involved around 30 different attacks in 18 towns and cities, many in areas that the Islamic State of Iraq recently said it was trying to reclaim, more than five years after being vanquished at the height of Iraq's civil war.

State security forces, government buildings and Shia Muslim neighbourhoods were the main targets of the attack, repeating a pattern that partly characterised the rampant violence that ravaged Iraq along sectarian lines from 2006 to 2007.

While no longer commonplace, such spectacular attacks have been launched with relative frequency since the height of the civil war. Residents of Baghdad angrily condemned the government, claiming that the ease with which bombers had penetrated rings of security in so many cities showed that terror groups had their measure.

"We got blown up in 2008, 2009 and 2010, said Ahmed Haidari, a resident of the impoverished Shia district of Sadr City, contacted by telephone. "God blessed us last year for once, but now it is back to the way it was before. Maybe worse.

"This sort of evil during Ramadan is evil."

Forty-year-old Abu Mohammed, from Taji, north of Baghdad, told Agence France Press: "I heard explosions in the distance, so I left my house and I saw a car outside. We asked the neighbours to leave their houses, but when they were leaving, the bomb went off."

The bombings started at about 5am, around the time that observant Muslims were taking a pre-dawn meal to mark the Muslim holy month, Ramadan, which started at the weekend. Attacks continued until around 10am, a schedule tailored to capitalise on the fact that the victims had returned to sleep ahead of a long, hot day of fasting.

The Baghdad neighbourhoods of Husseiniyah and Yarmuk, frequent targets of past attacks, were hit again, as were numerous areas in Diyyala province, which had been the scene of some of the worst attacks of the civil war. A military base in Salahedin province, not far from Saddam Hussein's ancestral home in Tikrit, was targeted around dawn by gunmen who shot dead around 15 soldiers.

Elsewhere, checkpoints were attacked by gunmen and roadside bombs were planted to hit passing security forces. Several judges were also targeted.

The Islamic State of Iraq – a direct al-Qaida affiliate, had warned that it would soon launch attacks. Last week it had claimed it was trying to re-group in areas to the north of Baghdad on which it had tried and failed to re-establish a regional caliphate in 2006.

An audio recording posted on the internet and thought to have been made by the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said: "We are starting a new stage. The first priority in this is releasing Muslim prisoners everywhere, and chasing and eliminating judges and investigators and their guards."

"On the occasion of the beginning of the return of the state to the areas that we left, I urge you to carry out more efforts, and send your sons with the mujahideen to defend your religion and obey God."

Iraq's political leaders are acutely sensitive to the perception that they can't control the streets of their towns and cities and no mention of the latest events was made on state-controlled television.

Iraq has tried to link attempts by al-Qaida to reorganise to the escalating crisis in Syria. Al-Qaida's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has urged those who follow the group's global jihad ideology to travel to Syria.

On Monday Iraq became the only Arab state to oppose an Arab League call for Syria's besieged president, Bashar al-Assad, to stand down. The stance was in part based on Iraq's fear that its delicate sectarian fabric would unravel if the violence in Syria spills over.

However, it was also rooted in the unwavering support of Iran for Syria.

In what is being perceived as a concession to Iraqis who say their government has been too uncritical of the Assad regime, the prime minister, Nour al-Maliki, on Monday overturned a decision that had banned Syrian refugees from fleeing to Iraq.

After a series of battles in 2007, US forces in Iraq at the time concluded that al-Qaida had been "strategically defeated". While the group has not at any point since been able to wreak the same carnage as it had in the previous three years, there have been constant reminders of the group's resilience.

Islamic State of Iraq members are known to have allied with members of Saddam Hussein's ousted Ba'ath party, which lost all power and patronage when Baghdad fell and has remained sidelined and resentful ever since.