Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for a recent string of attacks in Baghdad that killed 70 and left more than 200 wounded. The violence was comprised of nine car bombs, six roadside bombs and a mortar, and targeted residential, commercial and government districts in Baghdad’s mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. The attacks as well as a recent political crisis have raised concerns of a return to sectarian violence.
Violence broke out in Iraq days after the withdrawal of U.S. troops, when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice president. The al Qaeda website claimed, “The series of special invasions launched, under the guidance of the Ministry of War in the Islamic State of Iraq, to support the weak Sunnis in the prisons of the apostates and to retaliate for the captives who were executed.”
