A series of bombings on Friday struck mosques, a market and a shop in Baghdad, as well as the homes of a prosecutor and police officers in western Iraq, killing dozens, only five days after a joint Iraqi-American raid killed the top two leaders of the insurgency.
Iraq’s leaders had hailed the killings and arrests of insurgent leaders this week as a devastating blow to the group known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but warned that retaliation was almost certain to come. It was not clear that the group, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, was behind the latest jolt of violence.
The attacks were the worst of an intermittent wave of bombings since the parliamentary election on March 7, providing a violent backdrop to stalled efforts to finalize the results of the vote and form a new government.
According to preliminary accounts by the Ministry of the Interior, 12 bombs ”” including car bombs and improvised explosive devices, but not suicide bombers, an insurgent hallmark ”” killed at least 50 people in Baghdad and wounded more than 100. In Anbar, the sprawling mostly Sunni province to the west, seven people died when a series of explosions struck houses in a small village.
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