WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2010
KLMNO
Bombings kill at least 35 in Shiite areas of Baghdad
Attacks intensify fears of renewed sectarian violence
by Leila Fadel and Aziz Alwan
baghdad — A series of at least seven bombings ripped through mostly poor Shiite Muslim neigh- borhoods in the Iraqi capital Tuesday, killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 140, secu- rity officials said. The attacks heightened fears
that the Sunni Muslim insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to exploit the uncertainty follow- ing the March 7 parliamentary elections and start a sectarian war. Iraq was consumed by sec- tarian violence during the power vacuum that existed after the De- cember 2005 elections. Since Friday, about 90 people
have been killed and more than 300 wounded in and around the capital in attacks blamed on al- Qaeda in Iraq. U.S. intelligence officials de- clared two years ago that the group had been all but defeated. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and former White House special assistant on Middle East affairs, said the recent attacks may re- flect a “gradual revival” of the group, “not back to its 2006 sta- tus but back from its nadir in 2008.”
Other current and former in-
telligence officials and terrorism experts said the violence may simply reflect a renewed attempt by the group’s leaders to exploit divisions after the elections. “You only need a handful of guys and explosive material and you can very easily inflict pain,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism ex- pert at Georgetown University. Analysts fear that Iraqis will turn to insurgents and militias if they feel they have no govern- ment to protect them. Some say the U.S. military may need to re- consider its plan to draw down to 50,000 troops in Iraq by August. “I think it’s troubling,” said
Brett McGurk, a National Securi- ty Council official in the George W. Bush administration who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations. “The character of the target sets are different, and the pace of the attacks has accelerat- ed. Given, also, that over the next four months Iraq probably won’t have a government, the steep Au- gust timeline might be revisited.” U.S. officials urged “all sides to
avoid inflammatory rhetoric or actions” and not to use “these at- tacks to make political state- ments,” said Gary Grappo, chief of the U.S. Embassy’s political section.
Already, the political bloc of
secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, which won the plurality in Iraq’s parlia- ment, has issued fiery statements blaming Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki, a Shiite, for failing to stop the violence. Both are trying to win enough allies to secure the top job in the government. Maliki issued a statement Tues-
day saying that a plan was in place to “double” security in the Baghdad area. “I also call on all parties and political forces to
Maoist insurgents kill 76 in India
by Indrajit Singh
patna, india — Maoist in-
surgents, who say they fight for India’s rural poor, killed at least 76 soldiers Tuesday in a string of carefully planned ambushes in the forests of eastern India, un- derscoring the rebels’ strength de- spite a government offensive. The attack by hundreds of Mao- ists in a rebel stronghold in Chhattisgarh state was the deadli- est that the insurgents have mounted against government forces in their 43-year insurgency. The rebels launched the first at- tack early in the morning, firing on a group of soldiers returning to base from a two-day patrol, said G.K. Pillai, the federal home sec- retary. More soldiers were killed by land mines that were planted in the ambush zone, he said. More than 500 guerrillas — known as Naxalites — were in- volved in the attacks, according to R.K. Vij, inspector general of the Chhattisgarh police. No bodies of rebels were found. Inspired by Chinese revolution-
ary leader Mao Zedong, the rebels have tapped into the growing an- ger of India’s rural poor at being left out of the country’s economic gains. The rebels are in 20 of the country’s 28 states. While many are poorly armed,
they regularly launch attacks on government forces. In February, they killed 24 police officers in an attack in West Bengal state.
—Associated Press
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unite and stand by the security agencies and not to pour the fuel on the fire,” he said. In at least five of the attacks
Tuesday morning, people rented rooms or stores in or around apartment buildings, put explo- sive devices inside and detonated them within less than an hour, se- curity officials said. In the Chikook neighborhood, where a large community of dis- placed Shiites had fled from Sun- ni violence, two people rented a restaurant and a small conven- ience store two weeks ago, securi- ty officials and residents said. The store was rigged, and it
detonated just before 9 a.m. Tues- day, toppling the front and back of an apartment building. As
emergency workers extracted the injured, the scraps of a life de- stroyed hung from the shattered building: a yellow blanket, a child’s clothes and one dresser drawer. In central Baghdad, the same
tactic was used to topple an apartment building, a video game store where children gath- ered and a traditional cafe in the Shawaka district of the old city, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens. As cranes removed the rubble, hundreds of people gathered; parents wailed outside the video game store, where their sons had been playing.
A woman screamed for her son: “Where are you, Moham-
med, where are you?” She slapped her face and sobbed. “All this happened to you because I don’t have money to buy you a PlayStation.” Some survivors warned that if civilians were left unprotected, it was only a matter of time before they would try to protect them- selves. “They should form the next
government soon, because if they don’t, only God knows what will happen next,” said Abu Mu- hammed al-Rubaie, 45.
fadell@washpost.com
Staff writers Peter Finn and Joby Warrick in Washington and special correspondent Dalya Hassan in Baghdad contributed to this report.
LEILA FADEL/THE WASHINGTON POST
Hussein Abd Muslim, 20, center, stands in front of his destroyed store in Baghdad. “Maybe when we die, this will be over,” he said.
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