Bombings Shake Iraq
Jan. 6, 2012
A series of bomb attacks in Iraq on January 5 left at least 72 people dead. A suicide bombing targeting Shi’ite pilgrims near the city of Nasiriyah killed 48 people. Nasiriyah is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad. The pilgrims were on their way to the Shi’ite holy city of Karbala. Another 24 people were killed in multiple bombings in Shi’ite neighborhoods in Baghdad.
Sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims have worsened in recent weeks. After the last U.S. combat troops left Iraq in mid-December, the Shi’ite dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki issued an arrest warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the highest Sunni official in Iraq. The government alleged that Hashemi had ordered the assassinations of rival Shi’ite bureaucrats. Hashemi, who fled to the semi-autonomous northern region of Kurdistan, characterized the charges as “political slander.” His entire political bloc subsquently boycotted the Iraqi parliament and Maliki’s Cabinet.
A new government of Iraq took power in May 2006. This photograph shows Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, center, being congratulated by former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari. AP/Wide World
Sectarian violence, often carried out by a militant group that calls itself Al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia, left thousands of innocent Iraqis dead in 2006 and 2007. (Mesopotamia was an ancient region in which the world’s earliest civilization developed. It included the area that is now Iraq, eastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey.)
Additional World Book articles
- Al-Qa`ida
- Ashura
- Iraq War
- War in Iraq: A Special Report
- Iraq 2006 (Back in Time)
- Iraq 2007 (Back in Time)
