At least 55 killed in Iraq explosions

Bombings across Iraq killed dozens of people on Thursday, security officials said, in an indication of the strength of the insurgency two months after the US military completed its withdrawal.

Most of the attacks, which were carried out with car bombs and small arms, appeared to target security forces in the capital and other cities, authorities said. At least 55 people were killed and more than 220

wounded, according to local security officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

Although Thursday was not the deadliest day in Iraq since US forces completed their departure in late December, the attacks represented the most widespread operation yet mounted by suspected Sunni insurgents who have tried for years to topple the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

The victims included several civilians and some schoolchildren, security officials said.

Iraqi officials did not provide an official death toll, and few appeared on television to speak about, or condemn, the attacks. Osama al-Nujaifi, the Iraq parliament’s Speaker, said the attacks represented an attempt to “flare up strife” among Iraqis.

Mr Nujaifi said the assailants might have been trying to ignite fears about security to dissuade regional officials from attending an annual Arab summit scheduled to be held in Baghdad next month.

Legislators passed a bill on Thursday approving the purchase of 350 armoured vehicles for their personal use, worth more than $50m. As the casualties mounted, Iraqis reacted with outrage and blamed the country’s fractured political leadership for the insecurity that continues to plague the country.

“Today’s events mean that we have no government or that we have a weak one,” Waleed al-Rubaie, a 34-year-old private sector worker, said. “The political disputes are behind today’s blasts.”

Tension among Iraqi politicians has soared since US troops left, most notably after an arrest warrant was issued for Tariq al-Hashimi, the country’s Sunni vice-president. Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia prime minister, accused him of being involved in terrorist acts, a charge that Mr Hashimi has denied. The vice-president has avoided arrest by staying in a semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

Wesam al-Auqali, 35, a blacksmith, said the country’s security forces remain unprepared and susceptible to bribes. Mr Auqali said he drove a big truck loaded with building materials into a neighbourhood where such vehicles are banned because of the threat of car bombs. All it took was a $4 bribe to a police officer, he said.

“You can imagine how easy it is to get a car bomb past,” he said. “They can get as many as they want through a checkpoint.”

Thursday’s carnage followed a relatively quiet period in Baghdad and other usually violent cities, a lull that had led some Iraqis to speculate that Sunni insurgents had flooded into neighbouring Syria to join the revolt against Bashar al-Assad.

Although no group took responsibility for the bombings, they bore signs of the involvement of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has carried out co-ordinated complex attacks.

Baghdad bore the brunt of the latest attacks, with at least 23 dead, but assailants also struck in the northern provinces of Salahuddin and Kirkuk, in Anbar province in the west and in Babil province, south of Baghdad.

In the Adhamiyah district of northern Baghdad, assailants raised the black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organisation that includes the local al-Qaeda group, according to security officials.