BAGHDAD — Months of bloodshed have threatened to loosen the bonds holding together Iraq's fractious government, with tensions between political blocs spilling out in recent days in fiery rhetoric as well as fighting that left more than 130 people dead nationwide.
Disagreements over several contentious issues burst into the open with a highly divisive vote on the issue of parceling Iraq into federal districts, finger-pointing over the assassination of a top politician's brother and a series of massacres between rival Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs north of the capital.
There, among the lush palm groves and towns along the Tigris River, at least 73 people were killed in sectarian violence over the weekend. Shiite gunmen, seeking revenge for the beheadings of 26 farmers whose bodies were found in Sunni villages, marauded through the farming hub of Balad, about 50 miles north of the capital, officials said.
The assailants randomly killed Sunni men in the market, hospitals and a used-car lot, the officials said, and 12 victims reportedly burned to death. An Iraqi army source said a total of 47 people were killed.
Sunni tribesmen in farms outside Balad lobbed mortar rounds into the Shiite-dominated town and armed themselves for further fighting, said residents of the Sunni village of Duluiya. U.S. forces imposed a curfew on the area.
Meanwhile, authorities awaited news of the fate of several groups of Shiite men kidnapped from minibuses over the weekend on their way out of the nearby Shiite village of Dujayl.
Also Sunday, six car bomb explosions killed about 10 people and injured dozens around the northern city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by Arabs as well as ethnic Kurds who inhabit a semiautonomous section of northern Iraq.
In the capital, at least 52 Iraqis, including two children, were reported killed in shootings, rocket attacks, bombings and clandestine sectarian slayings.
Three U.S. solders were killed Saturday when their vehicle was caught in the blast of a homemade bomb south of Baghdad, the military said, disclosing no further details. At least 52 U.S. military personnel died in Iraq during the first two weeks of the month, putting October on pace to be the deadliest for U.S. troops in the country since January 2005.
