BAGHDAD — Militants blew up a key bridge Saturday on a highway connecting Iraq's oil-rich north to Baghdad, in what locals warned was part of a campaign to stoke ethnic unrest in the volatile melting pot.
The attack about 110 miles north of Baghdad was viewed as a strike against Iraq's trade routes, which see large convoys traveling north to south. The explosion closed the bridge to big vehicles and triggered warnings from residents that the group Al Qaeda in Iraq has designs on the strategic region around Kirkuk, where ethnic Turkmen live alongside Kurds and Arabs.
"Armed groups are trying to spread sectarianism ... and enmity inside Kirkuk," a city police official said on condition of anonymity.
"Such groups attack the Kurdish community one day; the next day, they attack the Arabs, and the next they target Turkmen, in an attempt to sow the seeds of sedition in Kirkuk's society."
A devastating attack in the Kirkuk region could broaden Iraq's civil war the same way last year's bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra did.
Iraq's Shiite-led Arab government and the semiautonomous northern region of Kurdistan are enmeshed in sensitive negotiations about the fate of the Kirkuk region, which includes the city and the province Al Tamim that surrounds it.
Al Tamim was carved out under the rule of Saddam Hussein to ensure an Arab majority in the oil-rich region. Tens of thousands of Kirkuk's Kurds were expelled as Hussein sought to consolidate his control of the northern oil fields.
The Kurds, who want to annex the Kirkuk region to Kurdistan, are pressing for a referendum this year on the fate of Al Tamim. Although the right to the referendum is guaranteed in the constitution, outsiders fear such a move would spark a greater conflagration, expanding Iraq's civil war to include the Kurds.
Already, Iraq's neighbor Turkey, which is home to a significant Kurdish minority and sees itself as protector of the region's Turkmen population, has warned the Kurds not to annex Kirkuk. In the last week it has amassed troops on the border with Iraq, with the aim of hunting down Kurdish separatists who use the region to stage attacks against Turkish forces.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki visited the Kurdish north Friday and Saturday -- a trip that coincided with the government's push to reach an understanding on Kirkuk, national oil legislation and amendments to the constitution. Alarmed by the Turkish troop movements, Maliki warned Turkey to respect Iraq's borders.
