Iraq violence kills at least 63 - San Francisco Chronicle

Baghdad --

A series of explosions ripped through Iraq's capital Thursday, in an ominous turn for a country already reeling from a deepening political and sectarian crisis that erupted after the departure of the U.S. military. It was Baghdad's deadliest day in more than a year.

The attacks began at 6:30 a.m. and transformed the morning commute into a bloodbath. Car bombs and improvised explosives destroyed schools, markets and apartments. An ambulance packed with explosives incinerated a government office. At least 63 people were killed and 185 wounded.

On Thursday night, four more blasts shook Baghdad, killing three more people.

There were fears that the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops might lead to instability in Iraq, but the speed with which conditions have deteriorated has alarmed Western officials. Until Thursday, however, the bitter fighting between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, and his political foes in parliament had not been accompanied by a rise in violence.

But with this round of bombings, the political turmoil seemed to spill into the streets, where a still potent insurgency, in abeyance for some time, remains capable of mounting attacks that can undermine the fragile government and pit Sunnis against Shiites.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks on Thursday, but they appeared similar to others conducted by the largely homegrown Sunni insurgent group, al Qaeda in Iraq.

A day earlier, al-Maliki added new tensions to the political climate by threatening to discard Iraq's fragile power-sharing government. He has never liked the U.S.-backed arrangement, which yokes Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds into one awkward partnership, but simply abandoning the idea could bring new howls of anger from Iraq's Sunni minority and create more instability.

Al-Maliki's Shiite-led government ignited a firestorm this week when it accused the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, of running a death squad. The Kurdish regional government in Iraq's semi-autonomous north offered no sign on Thursday that it would heed al-Maliki's demand that they surrender al-Hashimi, who fled there several days ago.

The political tensions even colored how Iraq's leaders responded to Thursday's attacks.

Al-Maliki strongly defended his security policies and political maneuvers, saying in a statement that the bombers "will not be able to change the course of the events and the political process."

One of his main rivals, former prime minister Ayad Allawi, said in a Twitter message that "we hold the government responsible for this security failure and the escalation toward violence."

The carnage, however, was blind to Iraq's sectarian divisions.

This article appeared on page A - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle