BAGHDAD — Ten bombings mainly targeting Shiite-majority areas of Baghdad province killed at least 41 people on Sunday, while 20 died in bombings and shootings elsewhere in Iraq, officials said.
The coordinated attacks are but the latest in a surge in violence in Iraq that has killed over 650 people so far just this month, while more than 5,350 have been killed since April of this year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources. The day of bloodshed marks the deadliest single-day series of assaults since October 5, when 75 people were killed in violence.
The complete media blackout of the violence in Iraq has left President Obama largely unaccountable for a failed foreign policy in the region and the massive loss of life. Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, according to some media outlets who have vaguely reported on the situation. But, if fact, violence in Iraq has spiked since April, when the number of killing reached levels surpassing levels in 2008, when thanks to President Bush and “the surge,” the country was beginning to stabilize after a brutal sectarian conflict.
Police officers said the bombs placed in the capital were in parked cars and were set to detonate over a half-hour period, targeted commercial areas and parking lots. Nine blasts hit different areas in and around Baghdad and also wounded more than 110 people.
In Shaab, a neighborhood in north Baghdad with some of the worst bloodshed, two car bombs exploded in a commercial area, killing at least 8 people and wounding at least 18.
Explosions also rocked the areas of Bayaa, Baladiyat, Mashtal, Hurriyah and Dura in Baghdad, and Saba al-Bur, Nahrawan and Tarmiyah near the capital.
The Mashtal blast hit a bus station, while bombs in Bayaa, Dura, Saba al-Bur and Tarmiyah all targeted commercial areas.
Local al Qaeda groups, whom are referred to as Sunni militants by an overly sensitive liberal media, often takes responsibility for the assaults, though so far there has been no one to claim credit for yesterday’s attacks. Al Qaeda, or “Sunni militants” oft-carry out attacks against members of Iraq’s Shiite majority, whom they regard as apostates.
Last month, officials in Iraq restricted car use for many Baghdad residents to only every other day, but thus far the response has failed in preventing the dozens of vehicle bombs exploding in and around the capital.
Meanwhile, in the city of Mosul, which is 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a suicide bomber drove his explosives-filled car into a group of Iraqi soldiers, killing 14 according to another Iraqi police officer. The soldiers were sealing off a street leading to a bank where troops were receiving salaries. At least 30 people were wounded.
Also in Mosul, police said gunmen shot dead two off-duty soldiers and a civilian in a drive-by shooting in two separate attacks, while a car bomb exploded near an army checkpoint in the city, killing a woman and wounding 8 people. And gunmen killed two Shiite civilians in the Muqdadiyah area, northeast of the city of Baquba.
The surge in bloodshed this year, which has included sectarian attacks, has raised fears Iraq may relapse into the intense Sunni-Shiite conflict that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people.
Analysts say the Shiite-led government’s failure to address grievances of the Sunni Arab minority, which complains of political exclusion and abuses by security forces, has been a main cause of the heightened unrest.
The level of violence in Iraq increased sharply following the decision by Iraqi security forces to storm a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq in April, sparking clashes in which dozens died.
And while authorities have made some concessions aimed at placating the protesters and Sunnis in general, such as freeing prisoners and raising the salaries of Sunni anti-Al-Qaeda fighters, the underlying issues remain unaddressed.
A new joint study released this month by academics in the United States, Canada and Iraq found that almost half a million people have died from war-related causes in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.
In the afternoon, a bomb killed four people and wounded 11 inside an outdoor market in the Sunni town of Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad.
The lack of media coverage on the violence in Iraq is part of larger narrative related to the “war on terror,” which is the result of a collusion between the liberal news organizations, who are bent on protecting President Obama from scrutiny. Since the “war on terror” began, according to a database of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, 73 percent of all U.S. Afghan War casualties have occurred since Jan. 20, 2009 when Obama was inaugurated.
President Obama was all too quick to bail on the blood and treasure spent on the Iraq War, and now the violence in Iraq threatens to plunge what could have been the greatest U.S. feign policy success in 50 years in to a civil war.
