Sadr City in Baghdad was hit by several car bombs in a sophisticated attack today, killing 160 Iraqis. Details from the New York Sun:
Iraq sealed its borders last night and braced for a deadly onslaught of sectarian retaliation after Sunni extremists murdered at least 160 people in coordinated car bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad.
The assault on the capital’s Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, which also injured more than 250 people, was the deadliest insurgent attack to be unleashed in the city since the fall of Saddam Hussein in May 2003.
The government imposed an indefinite curfew in Baghdad and shut the country’s main airports and ports.
…
“Many of the dead have been reduced to scattered body parts and are not counted yet,” the health minister, Ali al-Shemari, said.
The Shi’a have retaliated, of course, firing rounds of mortars into a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad on two occasions. The cycle of revenge continues without any apparent end in sight.
The Iraqi government is blaming al Qaeda insurgents, which makes sense. A lot of Iraqi Sunnis aren’t fond of al Qaeda, seeing them as outsiders bent on claiming control of their country. If al Qaeda operatives did or did not commit the act, the Maliki government will place the blame on them in an attempt to appeal to Iraqi nationalism across sects. Unfortunately, Maliki has little to no control over, well, anything, and the cycle of revenge will continue and push Iraq closer to all-out civil war.
Regardless, it appears as if the Iraqi government believes outside forces are directly responsible since they have attempted to close the Iraqi borders. An impossible task, of course, but an attempt has to be made so that Maliki can prove himself pro-active in combating the ever-growing insurgency. In the current Iraqi climate, however, the Shi’ite leader responsible for the most Sunni deaths will reap the greatest benefit.
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