BAGHDAD — Six car bombs exploded Monday in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, killing at least 36 people and raising concern that the calm enjoyed in the capital in recent months is starting to fray.
The attacks, which occurred over six hours and left more than 90 people wounded, recalled Baghdad's dark period before a U.S. troop buildup in 2007, when bombings claimed dozens of lives on any given day.
The blasts stoked fears that time was running out for the country's Shiite-led government to promote reconciliation among sects and ethnic groups. Suspects in the bombing included the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and the outlawed Baath Party as well as U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary fighters, called the Sons of Iraq.
The explosions came a week after Iraqi forces put down an insurrection by Sons of Iraq fighters in east Baghdad, which raised fear that Sunnis who had turned against the insurgency could return to fighting the Shiite-led government.
The attacks also heightened concern about the plans to withdraw U.S. combat troops to bases outside cities this summer.
The reduction in violence witnessed in the last year and a half has long been attributed to several factors: the sending of U.S. troops to live in Baghdad neighborhoods, the emergence of Sunni paramilitary fighters opposed to Al Qaeda in Iraq, the decision by Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr in August 2007 to rein in his Mahdi Army militia and the gradual improvement of Iraq's security forces.
However, some Iraqi politicians and Western analysts have described the relative calm as the product of truces that could easily unravel if there was no real political progress in Iraq.
Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish political parties remain deeply divided over issues such as providing jobs to former supporters of the late Saddam Hussein and passage of a national oil law. Some politicians worry that the country could be entering another violent era, with the relative quiet of last year having been squandered.
"In this last period, there have been no genuine accomplishments regarding national reconciliation so stability hasn't been achieved and the gap has widened between the government and the people," said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, the spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament.
Shiite officials attributed the attacks to remnants of Hussein's Baath Party ahead of the anniversary of both his fall in 2003 and the party's founding in 1947.
