Blasts Kill More Than135 in Two Days in Iraq

BAGHDAD, April 23 -- Two large suicide bombings Thursday renewed fears among Iraqis that Sunni insurgents are regaining strength and lethality as the U.S. military has started disassembling its massive wartime architecture.

The blasts, which killed more than 80 people in the bloodiest day here this year, came after Sunni insurgent groups warned that they would step up attacks against U.S. troops and Iraq's Shiite-led government, which is backed by the United States. One attack killed 53 Iranian pilgrims and two Iraqis at a restaurant in Diyala province. The other killed 28 Iraqis in a predominantly Shiite district of central Baghdad.

[On Friday, at least 55 more people were killed, and 125 were injured, in back-to-back suicide bombings outside the most important Shiite shrine in the capital, the Associated Press reported. Bombers detonated explosive belts within minutes of each other near the gates of the tomb of the prominent Shiite saint Imam Mousa al-Kazim.]

Insurgent groups, which controlled vast areas of Iraq in 2006 and 2007, had lost considerable support, mobility and financial backing over the past two years. The most recent bombings follow a series of attacks that began last month after the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization that includes the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, announced that it would carry out a wave of violence code-named "The Good Harvest."



The violent campaign coincides with plans for a U.S. pullback. The first deadline in a phased American withdrawal agreed upon by Iraq and the United States comes this summer, when combat troops are supposed to move out of urban areas. Top U.S. commanders have recently said the Iraqi government may ask them to keep American forces in cities in northern Iraq -- where the insurgency remains entrenched -- beyond the summer deadline. In Baghdad, the military has closed some inner-city bases and small outposts, but appears intent on keeping American soldiers at urban facilities shared with Iraqi troops well beyond the summer.

The attacks, which happened shortly after noon, came as an Iraqi military spokesman announced the capture of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the mysterious leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. A U.S. military spokesman said Thursday night that the military could not confirm the report. U.S. intelligence officials have said Baghdadi is probably a fictional character created by non-Iraqi Arab leaders of the insurgent group to give it an Iraqi face. Iraqi authorities have in the past made similar assertions about Baghdadi's arrest that turned out to be wrong.

Mariam al-Rayyis, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the recent spate of bombings has not prompted the Maliki government to contemplate easing the rigid withdrawal timeline it insisted on last fall during contentious negotiations with U.S. officials, who fought setting firm deadlines.

"They want to pack their bags and leave as soon as possible," Rayyis said, referring to U.S. troops.

The detention of Baghdadi, she said, was carried out without the help of U.S. forces, showing that "Iraq's security forces are ready to receive security responsibilities."

If violence were to spike sharply in Iraq, the Obama administration, which has begun moving troops deployed in Iraq to Afghanistan, could be forced to reassess its withdrawal plan. The plan calls for the departure of American combat troops by summer 2010 and a complete pullout by the end of 2011.

"I believe that the upcoming withdrawal is inevitable," said W. Andrew Terrill, a national security professor at the U.S. Army War College. "The Iraqi government wants a U.S. withdrawal, and the U.S. public wants it. Neither group will find it acceptable to introduce dramatic changes to the current drawdown plans under most foreseeable circumstances."

Even if the U.S. military were to seek more flexibility in the withdrawal plans, it is far from clear that Iraqi officials -- who loathe being seen as dependent on, and subservient to, the American government -- would oblige. link...