Gunmen using weapons fitted with silencers attacked checkpoints and suicide bombers targeted shoppers in a marketplace as insurgents launched assaults in Iraq on Monday that killed at least 40 people and wounded 100 more.
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The attacks in different parts of Baghdad and in towns to the east, south and west of the capital appeared aimed at showing Iraqis that al-Qaeda in Iraq was still a potent force despite suffering major battlefield defeats in recent weeks. In the bloodiest incident, a suicide bomber wearing a vest laden with explosives and another driving a car killed at least 13 people and wounded 40 in a marketplace in al-Suwayra, 50 km (30 miles) southeast of Baghdad, said Majid Askar, an official with the Wasit provincial council. At dawn in Baghdad, gunmen equipped with silencers killed at least seven Iraqi soldiers and policemen when they attacked six checkpoints, while bombs planted at three others wounded several more, an Interior Ministry source said. All the checkpoints were attacked around the same time, the source said, asking not to be identified. "This was a message to us that they can attack us in different parts of the city at the same time because they have cells everywhere," he said. In separate incidents, 20 people have been killed in a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in south Baghdad, a car bomb in Tarmiya, bombs outside policemen’s homes in the western province of Anbar and a suicide car bombing in the northern city of Mosul. The attacks on checkpoints using silencers, intended to add an element of surprise and to sow confusion, showed a new tactic was being used by a weakened yet still dangerous insurgency after government forces dealt a series of major blows to al-Qaeda’s local network in recent weeks. Overall violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the height of sectarian warfare in 2006/07 but a March election that produced no clear winner and left the country adrift in political uncertainty has fuelled tensions. A cross-sectarian alliance led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, rode strong support from minority Sunnis to take a two-seat lead in the March 7 parliamentary vote. The country’s main Shiite-led coalitions, however, have agreed to form an alliance that would deprive Allawi of a chance to try to form the next government, potentially angering Sunnis. |