Iraq blasts kill 12 as tensions grow
SEVERAL bomb blasts have killed at least 12 people, a day after more than 70 died in attacks on majority Shi’ites, stoking fears of all-out sectarian war with minority Sunnis.
More than 200 people have been killed in the past week as Sunni-Shi’ite tensions, fuelled by the civil war in neighbouring Syria, threaten to plunge Iraq back into communal bloodletting.
In yesterday’s violence, three roadside bombs exploded near a livestock market in the ethnically diverse city of Kirkuk, kill- ing six people. Kirkuk is in a disputed oil-rich swathe of Iraq claimed both by the Shi’ite-dominated government in Baghdad and ethnic Kurds who run their own autonomous administration in the north.
Two car bomb blasts killed three people in a residential area of the town of Tuz Khurmato, also in the disputed area. North of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed three soldiers at a checkpoint in Tarmiya.
Ten years after the US-led invasion that to pple d Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds have yet to find a stable power-sharing deal and violence is again on the upswing.
The conflict in Syria, where mostly Sunni rebels are fighting to topple President Bashar al Assad, is turning in part into a regional proxy war between Sunni and Shi’ite powers.
Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Shi’ite Hezbollah group is now openly fighting alongside Mr Assad’s forces, which are dominated by members of his minority Shi’ite-linked Alawite sect.
Iraq’s Sunnis, who resent their treatment by Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki’s government, have staged mass protests since December. Sunni militants, some of them linked to al Qaeda, have exploited the unrest, urging Sunnis to take up arms.