BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – More than 20 bombs hit cities and towns across Iraq yesterday, killing at least 36 and wounding more than 100, police and hospital sources said, raising fears of sectarian strife in a country keen to show it can now maintain security.
In Baghdad, three car bombs, two roadside bombs and one suicide car bomb hit mainly Shi’ite areas in what looked like coordinated attacks, killing 15 people and wounding 61, the sources said.
Two car bombs and three roadside bombs aimed at police and army patrols in the northern oil city of Kirkuk killed eight people and wounded 26, police and hospital sources said.
“I was trying to stop traffic to let a police patrol pass. When it passed, a car bomb exploded and I fell on the ground and police took me to the hospital,” a policeman wounded in the face and chest told Reuters as doctors tended his wounds. He declined to be named.
Heightened tension between Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds in the fragile coalition government since U.S. troops withdrew in December has raised fears of a return to sectarian violence of the kind that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war a few years ago. The country is less violent than at the height of that conflict in 2006-07, but bombings and killings still happen daily, often aimed at Shi’ite areas and local security forces.
