BAGHDAD — Gunmen fired into a bakery complex bedecked with Shiite Muslim political posters here Friday while another group of militants car-bombed a Shiite mosque near Baqubah, killing more than 20 people in the two attacks.
The deaths raised fears that Sunni Muslim insurgents are increasingly targeting the Shiite community, which is preparing for an important holiday.
Blood was spattered amid the bread and cookies of the bakery, which was draped with religious mottos and decorated with pictures of clerics, including Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Some Shiites saw the two attacks as a sign of a renewed assault on their sect. The U.S. government is trying to control sectarian violence to keep the country from plunging into a full-fledged civil war.
"They are definitely the Wahhabi fundamentalists who consider Shiite traditions as being blasphemous," said Ali Radhi, a 21-year-old police officer, referring to the dominant sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia. "These were just innocent workers."
A brother of one of the dead men wept as he was led from the scene of the shootings to a car. He blamed politics for his sibling's death.
"May Allah curse both Sunni and Shiite parties, who have caused such misery," the distraught man said, surrounded by friends and family members.
The divide between Sunni and Shiite Arabs in Iraq has become more pronounced in the wake of the Jan. 30 elections, which Shiite blocs are expected to win when final results are made public in the coming days. Shiites make up about 60% of Iraq's population.
For the first time in modern Iraq's history, Sunnis, who largely boycotted the vote, are expected to have a minority role in the government. Embittered and threatened, Sunni groups are divided over whether to fight the Shiite ascendancy or participate in the drafting of a new constitution for the country, an exercise that will follow the selection of a president and prime minister.
At Baghdad's main Sunni mosque, one prayer leader proposed Friday that Sunni leaders meet soon to decide on a Sunni stance toward the government that will be formed after election results are made public.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, meanwhile, made a lightning visit to Iraq, meeting with interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose party failed to gain a large share of the vote, according to partial results. Allawi's role in the next government is unclear.
