National Post Reports: A series of bombings hit Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 63 people in the first big assault attack on Iraq’s capital since a sectarian crisis erupted within its government just days after the U.S. troop withdrawal.
The apparently coordinated bombings were the first sign of a violent backlash against Shi’ite Muslim Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s move to sideline two Sunni Muslim rivals, raising the risk of a relapse into the sort of sectarian bloodletting that drove Iraq to the brink of civil war a few years ago.
At least 18 people were killed when a suicide bomber driving an ambulance detonated the vehicle near a government office in Baghdad’s Karrada district, sending up a dust cloud and scattering car parts into a kindergarten, according to police and health officials.
