Iraq unrest toll up to 73 dead, 128 wounded, PM seeks world's support
15 January 2014, 20:38
A wave of violence in Iraq, including car bombs, suicide attacks and shootings, killed at least 73 people and wounded 128 on Wednesday, security and medical officials said, as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned that militants were trying to set up an 'evil statelet'.
The twin setbacks for authorities, grappling with Iraq's worst period of unrest since the country emerged from a sectarian war that killed tens of thousands, come just months before a parliamentary election.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon and other diplomats have urged Iraq's leaders to seek political reconciliation to resolve nationwide violence and the standoff in Anbar.
But Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ruled out dialogue with militants as his forces have launched wide-ranging security operations.
However the operations, which authorities say have led to the death or capture of several militants affiliated with the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), have not stopped the bloodshed.
Eight car bombs hit civilian targets in majority-Shiite or confessionally mixed neighbourhoods of the capital, killing 37 people.
One of them struck a packed market in the Shaab neighbourhood, while another detonated outside a restaurant on Sanaa Street, killing five people and badly damaging the restaurant and adjacent buildings, an AFP journalist reported.
The windows of nearby shops were shattered, the restaurant's ceiling partially caved in and blood and mangled vehicle parts scattered across the street.
The Baghdad carnage could have been much worse, with police saying they managed to thwart four suicide bombers with explosives-rigged vehicles.
A suicide bombing at a funeral in Buhruz, in religiously mixed Diyala province north of Baghdad, killed 16 people and wounded 20, officials said.
The funeral was for a member of the Sahwa, the Sunni tribal militia who sided with the US military against their co-religionists in Al-Qaeda from 2006, helping turn the tide against the jihadists.
They are often targeted by Sunni militants who regard them as traitors.
Farther north, 13 people, including nine soldiers, were killed in and around the city of Mosul, while seven employees of a brick factory in Muqdadiyah, also north of Baghdad, were gunned down by insurgents.
Two years after US troops left Iraq, violence has climbed back to its highest levels since the Sunni-Shi'ite bloodshed of 2006-2007, when tens of thousands of people were killed.
The army is locked in a standoff with Sunni militants who overran Falluja, a city west of Baghdad, more than two weeks ago in a challenge to Maliki's Shi'ite-led government.
They are led by the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is fighting in western Iraq and Syria to carve out a cross-border Islamist fiefdom.
'The battle will be long and will continue,' Maliki said on state television, calling for world support. 'If we keep silent it means the creation of evil statelets that would wreak havoc with security in the region and the world.'
Maliki has ruled out an assault on Falluja by the troops and tanks ringing the city of 300,000, but has told local tribesmen to expel ISIL, which has exploited anger among minority Sunnis against a government they accuse of oppressing them.
Al Qaeda loyalists are pursuing a relentless campaign of attacks, mostly aimed at security forces, Shi'ite civilians and Sunnis seen as loyal to the Shi'ite-led government.
The violence has dismayed leaders of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. 'This is a disaster,' its president's chief of staff Fuad Hussein told Reuters. 'Now the whole country is being threatened by terrorists, so we need to have a common front.'
Voice of Russia, AFP, Reuters
Source: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_15/ Iraq-unrest-toll-up-to-73-dead-128- wounded-9282/
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