BAGHDAD: Attacks near Baghdad and northern and western Iraq killed 15 people yesterday, the latest deadly violence to rock the country amid fears it is slipping back into all-out sectarian war.
Iraq’s worst bloodshed since 2008, with more than 6,000 people killed already this year, has forced the authorities to appeal for international help in combatting militancy ahead of general elections due to be held in April.
Officials have blamed a resurgent Al Qaeda emboldened by the civil war in neighbouring Syria, but the government has been criticised for not doing more to address grievances in the Sunni Arab community which analysts say fuels the violence.
Yesterday, shootings and bombings struck around Baghdad, as well as in and around the northern cities of Mosul and Tuz Khurmatu, killed 15 people, while a rare double bombing in the Kurdish north left two senior security officers wounded.
In the deadliest violence, a family of six — two men, two women and two children — were found dead after having been gunned down in their homes in Al Nibaie, which lies just north of the capital.
It is the latest in a troubling series of attacks where large groups of people have been shot dead and left for authorities to find, scenes eerily reminiscent of the worst of Iraq’s gruesome communal war.
At the peak of sectarian fighting in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion, Sunni and Shia militias regularly carried out tit-for-tat kidnappings and assassinations and left scores of corpses littering the streets.AFP
