BAGHDAD, Iraq – A suicide car bomber turned a venerable book market into a deadly inferno and gunmen targeted Shiite pilgrims Monday as suspected Sunni insurgents brought major bloodshed back into the lap of their main Shiite rivals. At least 38 people died in the blast and seven pilgrims were killed.
The violence after a relative three-day lull in Baghdad was seen as another salvo in the Sunni extremist campaign.
“Al-Sadr and his forces could be feeling under siege,” said Alireza Nourizadeh, chief researcher at the London-based Center for Arab-Iranian Studies. “That makes them less predictable. That means they are more dangerous.”
Within seconds, flames engulfed open-air stalls and shops brimming with books and magazines. Gas-powered generators needed because of frequent power cuts exploded one by one.
Firefighters had to spray huge arches of water from blocks away because their trucks were took large for the warren of lanes in old Baghdad. At least 38 people died and 105 were injured, said Raad Jabar, a Health Ministry official.
But the final casualty count may not be clear until Tuesday. Fire crews still battled the blazes more than 12 hours after the attack, said civil defense Maj. Gen. Abdul Rasoul al-Zaidi.
“Papers from the book market were floating through the air like leaflets dropped from a plane,” said Naeem al-Daraji, a Health Ministry worker who was driving about 200 yards from the blast and was slightly injured by broken glass from his car window.“Pieces of flesh and the remains of books were scattered everywhere,” he said.
In other violence, gunmen opened fire on Shiite pilgrims in several places around Baghdad, killing at least seven people, police said.
The Shiites were apparently heading to shrines and holy sites in southern Iraq for the annual commemoration to end a 40-day mourning period for the death of a revered 7th century Shiite martyr, Imam Hussein.
That’s mostly because al-Sadr ordered his fighters to pull back after coming under strong government arm-twisting to allow the security plan to proceed.
In Sadr City, Iraqi troops set up checkpoints and took a far more visible role than Americans, who led the push into the area Sunday. The move was an apparent attempt to avoid Shiite anger in a place of past street battles with U.S. forces.
An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said 10 of the 39 ministry posts soon would be replaced _ including five of the six ministers loyal to al-Sadr. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.
Relations between al-Sadr and the government are already tense in the region. Late last year, the prime minister withdrew his official protection for al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army and allowed U.S.-led forces to close in.