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# Bombs kill more than 35 people across Iraq

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- Bombs strike Baghdad Shi'ite districts, eight killed-police
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1 of 2. Iraqi security personnel inspect the site of a bomb attack in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, May 15, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Ako Rasheed

BAGHDAD | Wed May 15, 2013 3:58pm EDT

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bomb attacks in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad and in northern Iraq killed more than 35 people on Wednesday, following weeks of violence by Sunni Islamist insurgents determined to unleash sectarian confrontation.

Tensions between minority Sunni Muslims and the Shi'ites who now lead Iraq are at their highest since U.S. troops pulled out in 2011, with relations coming under more pressure by the day from the largely sectarian conflict in neighboring Syria.

A string of car bombings hit Shi'ite neighborhoods across the capital Baghdad on Wednesday evening, including one outside a cafe and another at a market, killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens more, police said.

"I saw a bright flash followed by a strong explosion that shook the building. Glass was shattered everywhere, people immediately ran to the scene and started evacuating the wounded and the dead," said Jabar al-Rubaie, a policeman at the scene in Sadr City district in Baghdad.

One channel broadcast images from the capital's Zaafaraniya district, where many houses were partially damaged and several cars were in flames. Ambulances evacuated victims and a man ran holding a wounded child.

Earlier, 10 people were killed when two car bombs exploded near government buildings in the ethnically mixed oil city of Kirkuk.

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle also blew himself up near a police patrol in northern Baghdad, killing at least two officers, while a roadside bomb killed a policeman in a town near Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) to the north, police and medical sources said.

Relations between Iraq's Shi'ite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish communities have come under growing strain since the last U.S. troops left in December 2011.

The coalition government, split among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish political blocs, is hobbled by disagreements about how to share power.

But the conflict in neighboring Syria, where mostly Sunni rebels are trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad, who follows the Alawite offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has also put pressure on Iraq's delicate intercommunal balance.

Although violence is well below the height of sectarian slaughter in 2006-7, when tens of thousands were killed, Sunni Islamist insurgents now carry out attacks almost daily to try to undermine the Shi'ite-led government.

Al Qaeda's local wing, Islamic State of Iraq, and other Sunni insurgents are trying to use Syria's war to gain legitimacy and tap into frustrations among Iraqi Sunnis, hoping to regain ground they lost during their long battle with American troops.

(Reporting by Mustafa Mahmoud in Kirkuk and Kareem Raheem in Baghdad; Writing by Suadad al-Salhy; Editing by Patrick Markey and Alison Williams)

World
Iraq

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We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/
Comments (12)
trex2561 wrote:
Glad to see our thousands of lives and billions of dollars have finally brought peace to these poor people. At least under Sadam most of them had lights and toilets that worked but Israel wanted him gone so pffft.
May 15, 2013 10:17am EDT -- Report as abuse
gregbrew56 wrote:
Things are SO much better in Iraq since Cheney’s wealth transfer charade.
May 15, 2013 10:44am EDT -- Report as abuse
flashrooster wrote:
Both trex2561 and gregbrew56 are dead right. What a monstrous squandering of the lives of 4500 US soldiers, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, our country’s credibility, and trillions of dollars that OUR country, not Iraq, really needs. And the Republicans want an investigation into Benghazi where 4 lives were lost and the only questionable act involved was not getting the story accurate at the start of the chaos. Possibly up to a million dead in Iraq without any word of remorse on the part of the Republicans, and now they want us to believe they really care about the deaths of these 4 embassy officials. The conservatives are turning our nation into Hell.
May 15, 2013 1:27pm EDT -- Report as abuse
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