A series of five car bombs, three during prayers at mosques in Baghdad, and other attacks across Iraq killed 58 people on Friday, just days after the government said al-Qaeda was on the run.
The violence appeared to be an attempt by insurgents to demonstrate they are still a potent force days after Iraqi authorities announced the killings of the top two al-Qaida in Iraq leaders in what was seen as a major blow.
The violence wounded dozens more and underscored the unrest that continues to plague a nation whose politicians are struggling to form a government almost seven weeks after a general election seen crucial to its long-term stability.
Two car bombs in the impoverished district of Sadr City, one close to a political office of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and another at a market in the area, killed 39 people and wounded 45, a security official said.
A third car bomb that exploded outside a Shiite mosque in al-Ameen district in the east of the capital killed eight people and wounded 13, he said.
Earlier, at Abdel Hadi al-Chalabi mosque, named after the father of former deputy prime minister Ahmed Chalabi, a car bomb killed five people and wounded 14, he added.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks in Baghdad, but the sequence of car bombings bore the hallmark of al-Qaeda.
A total of 115 people were wounded in the five car bombs and two other attacks, the security official said.
The attacks in the capital followed early morning violence in al-Anbar, a Sunni Arab province west of Baghdad, where an anti-terror judge's home was targeted in a sequence of house explosions that killed six people.
The judge, who recently sentenced three insurgents to 15 years in jail, escaped unharmed but two of his sons were injured.
Friday's violence came four days after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was "bleeding" and its leaders "falling" after a joint Iraqi-U.S. military operation on Sunday purportedly killed its top two leaders.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the political leader of AQI, and Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian militant and the insurgent group's self-styled "minister of war," died on Sunday, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said the "deaths are potentially devastating blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq."
But defense analysts cautioned that Iraq's fledgling security forces must also remove AQI's mid-level commanders if attacks, such as massive suicide truck bombings at government ministries in the past eight months, are to stop.
Political stalemate
The conflict-wracked country held parliamentary elections on March 7, the second such vote since Saddam Hussein was ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Maliki narrowly lost to his main challenger, former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Allawi won 91 seats to Maliki's 89 but neither came close to the 163 seats needed to form a government on their own, ushering in weeks of as yet fruitless negotiations to put together a ruling coalition in a 325-seat parliament.
The political stalemate, which will be further protracted given the decision earlier this week to conduct a manual recount of ballots cast in Baghdad, comes as the United States moves steadily towards a military exit from Iraq.
President Barack Obama pledged last year to withdraw all combat troops by August 31, ahead of a complete withdrawal of soldiers by the end of 2011.
There are currently around 95,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and the political impasse is a major concern for Washington, as its withdrawal plan relies on the number of soldiers falling gradually to 50,000 by the August deadline.
Source \ Alarabiya.net