Baghdad suicide bomber kills dozens in attack on Shia office

• Reuters in Baghdad
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 June 2012 12.57 EDT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/04/baghdad-suicide-bomber-kills-dozens

A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside a Shia religious office in central Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 190.

The bombing comes at a sensitive time, with the country's fractious Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs locked in a crisis that threatens to unravel their power-sharing deal and fuel sectarian tensions.

The attacker targeted the Shia Endowment – a government-run body that manages religious and cultural sites – scattering the dead and wounded along a main street nearby and reducing part of its headquarters to rubble, police said.

"It was a powerful explosion; dust and smoke covered the area. At first I couldn't see anything, but then I heard screaming women and children," said policeman Ahmed Hassan, who was at a nearby police station when the bomb went off.

"We rushed with other police to help … the wounded were scattered all around, and there were body parts on the main street," he said.

Violence in Iraq has eased, but Sunni insurgents tied to al-Qaida are still capable of launching devastating attacks and often hit Shia targets to stir up the kind of sectarian pressure that pushed Iraq close to civil war in 2006 and 2007.

Security officials said initial evidence from Monday's blast pointed to a suicide car bomber. They said the attack appeared to have been carried out by Islamic State of Iraq, al-Qaida's Iraqi wing, which often uses suicide bombers.

The Shia Endowment has been caught up in a dispute with the rival Sunni Endowment over control of a key Shia shrine in the Sunni stronghold of Samarra. An 2006 attack on the al-Askari shrine in Samarra sparked sectarian fighting that killed tens of thousands in the following two years.

Last week, a truck bombing in a marketplace, a car bomb and several roadside explosions killed at least 17 people and broke weeks of relative calm in Baghdad, where daily attacks claimed hundreds of victims at the height of the war.

In mid April, more than 20 bombs were detonated in towns and cities across the country, killing 36 people. Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for those attacks.

Since the last US troops left Iraq in December, nine years after the invasion, tensions have been running high in Iraqi politics, with critics of the Shia prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, threatening to seek a vote of no confidence against him.

Many Sunni and Kurdish leaders say they fear Maliki is shoring up Shia power by sidelining them from power-sharing agreements. But Maliki's supporters say his critics have long obstructed the work of his government to try to wrest more concessions.