Suicide bombers, car bombs and gunmen using silencers killed at least 100 people in Iraq today after insurgents carried out a wave of assaults against markets, a factory car park and police and army checkpoints.
The attacks in different parts of Baghdad and in towns to the south, north and west of the capital appeared aimed at showing Iraqis that al-Qaeda in Iraq was still a potent force despite suffering battlefield defeats in recent weeks.
They also occurred as Iraq remained gripped by political uncertainty two months after an inconclusive election that pitted a cross-sectarian bloc backed by minority Sunnis against the main Shia-led political coalitions.
In the bloodiest incident, two suicide car bombers drove into the entrance of a textile factory as workers were ending a shift in the town of Hilla, 62 km south of Baghdad, a regional office of the national media centre said.
At least 35 people died and 136 were wounded, hospital and police officials said.
A third bomb exploded as police and medics rushed to the scene, causing additional casualties.
"This looks like a major campaign by the terrorists, not just in Hilla," said the region's governor. The attacks were a reaction to efforts by Shi'ite factions to form a governing coalition after the March 7th election, he said.
In the southern oil city of Basra, a car bomb exploded at a market, killing at least nine people and wounding 22 others, a police source. Oil production, the bulk of which comes from fields outside the city, was not affected.
Earlier, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives-laden vest and another driving a car killed 13 people and wounded 40 in a marketplace in al-Suwayra 50 kilometres 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.
"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," the source said.
A series of further attacks in the western province of Anbar, the volatile northern city of Mosul, the northern and western outskirts of Baghdad and elsewhere took the death toll from today's bloodshed to at least 80, with over 200 wounded.
Overall violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the height of sectarian warfare in 2006/07, but the March 7gt election that produced no clear winner has fuelled tensions.
The cross-sectarian alliance led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia, rode strong support from Sunnis to take a two-seat lead in the parliamentary vote. Iraq's main Shia-led coalitions, however, have agreed to form an alliance that could deprive Mr Allawi of a chance to try to form the next government, potentially angering Sunnis.
Reuters