Co-ordinated attacks struck a dozen mostly Shia neighbourhoods, killing 69 people, on single day last week
An al-Qaida front group in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the wave of bomb attacks that ripped through markets, cafes and government buildings in Baghdad on a single day last week, killing 69 people and raising new fears about security.
The co-ordinated attacks hit a dozen mostly Shia neighbourhoods on Thursday in what was the first major bloodshed since US troops completed a full withdrawal this month after nearly nine years of war.
The blasts also coincided with a government crisis that has again strained ties between Iraq's Sunnis and Shias to breaking point – the same faultline that nearly pushed Iraq into all-out civil war several years ago.
The claim of responsibility made no mention of the US withdrawal. Instead, it focused on the country's Shia-dominated leadership, which Sunni insurgents have battled since it came to power as a result of the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
"The series of special invasions [was] launched … to support the weak Sunnis in the prisons of the apostates and to retaliate for the captives who were executed," the statement, in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq, said.
According to the Site Intelligence Group, a US-based organisation that monitors jihadist websites, the claim of responsibility was posted late on Monday.
The group said the attacks were proof that they "know where and when to strike and the mujahideen will never stand with their hands tied while the pernicious Iranian project shows its ugly face".
The remark was in reference to accusations by Sunni militants that Iraq's Shia-dominated government has allied itself too closely with Iran.
The Baghdad military spokesman, Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, said al-Qaida in Iraq – no longer focused on fighting US forces – hoped to take advantage of the current political tension to reignite sectarian warfare.
"It has become a clear scheme to draw Iraq into a sectarian war again," Moussawi said. "Al-Qaida in Iraq played a major role in 2005 and 2006 in pushing the county into a civil war, and they succeeded."
On Tuesday morning, a car bomb exploded near a police station in the town of Hawija, killing two civilians and injuring another, police said.
US and some Iraqi officials have warned of a resurgence of Sunni and Shia militants and an increase in violence after the US troop withdrawal.