Baghdad: At least 26 people were killed and more than 190 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive-packed car outside a Shia Muslim office in central Baghdad, media reported on Monday.
According to reports, the bombing on a Shia religious office 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 spill into sectarian tensions.
The attacker targeted the Shia Endowment — a government-run body that manages Shia religious and cultural sites — leaving dead and wounded along a main street nearby and blasting part of its headquarters to rubble, police said.
Policeman Ahmed Hassan, who was at a nearby police station when the bomb went off, said that 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,” he said.
“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 Qaeda are still capable of devastating attacks and often hit Shia targets to stir up the kind of sectarian pressure that pushed Iraq close to civil war in 2006-2007.
Security officials said initial evidence from Monday’s blast pointed to a suicide car bomber. They said the bombing appeared to have been carried out by Islamic State of Iraq, al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing, which often uses suicide bombers in its attacks.
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 city of Samarra. An attack on the Al Askari shrine in Samarra in 2006 sparked sectarian fighting that killed tens of thousands in the two following years.
Since the last American troops left Iraq in December, nine years after the US-led invasion, tensions have been running high in Iraqi politics with critics of Shia Prime Minister Nuri 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 supporters say his critics have long obstructed the work of his government to try to wrestle more concessions from the Shia leader.
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