Baghdad: Al-Qaeda’s front group in Iraq on Monday claimed responsibility of bombings targeting Shiite areas of Baghdad that killed at least 21 people on Sunday.
Three car bombs struck the sprawling Sadr City slum in the north of the city on Sunday, car bombs exploded in Ameen, Al-Husseiniyah and Kamaliyah in the east, and a roadside bomb blew up in Karrada in central Baghdad, security and medics there said.
Another roadside device went off in Saidiyah in the capital’s south.
In a message posted on Jihadist websites, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) said that it carried out the attacks “in revenge for alleged criminal acts by the Shia-led government in Sunnis areas of the capital.”
Al-Qaeda’s front group is widely seen as weaker than during the peak of Iraq’s sectarian bloodshed from 2006 to 2008, but is still capable of carrying out mass-casualty attacks on a regular basis.
The latest violence comes as after nearly two months of anti-government protests centred on Sunni-majority areas in north and west Iraq, calling for the ouster of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, and amid a festering political crisis.
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