KIRKUK, IRAQ, AND BAGHDAD — Only hours after Iraqi security forces paraded in the street Tuesday in celebration of taking control of their cities from U.S. troops, militants mounted their first challenge to Iraq's new era with a car bombing in Kirkuk that claimed the lives of at least 33 people and wounded 97.
The bloodshed in the northern Iraqi city that sits atop lucrative oil reserves and is the sought-after prize in an Arab-Kurdish competition for power and wealth raised doubts about whether Iraqis can fill the security vacuum after the American departure.
The parked car exploded in the late afternoon at a vegetable market in Shorja, a Kurdish section of Kirkuk, according to police and medical sources, who provided the casualty figures.
The attack came barely a week after nearly 80 people were killed in a suicide truck bombing in Taza Khurmatu, a Shiite Turkmen town just south of Kirkuk. Both blasts pointed to a deliberate effort to fan ethnic tensions in the oil-rich area that Kurds wish to claim as part of their self-governing region in northern Iraq and Arabs want tied to the central government in Baghdad.
The blast marred a day that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had hailed as a historic victory and the first milestone on the way to the withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011. President Obama says he wants all combat troops home from Iraq by the end of August next year.
The government staged holiday military marches in various areas as its forces took over full responsibility from U.S. troops, who have been relegated mostly to bases on the periphery of cities or to rural areas, to be summoned only as needed by the Iraqi government and its military commanders. A U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, signed late last year, called for all American combat troops to be out of population centers by June 30.
"This day, which we consider a national celebration, is an achievement made by all Iraqis," Maliki told the nation in an address on state television, sitting at his desk, with a dozen Iraqi flags.
"Our incomplete sovereignty and the presence of foreign troops is the most serious legacy we have inherited [from former leader Saddam Hussein]. Those who think that Iraqis are unable to defend their country are committing a fatal mistake."
In Kirkuk, the market attack appeared to undermine such confidence. The blast gutted more than 40 stores, reducing at least a dozen to rubble.
