BAGHDAD — In the deadliest day of violence since the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Iraq's cities last week, at least 54 people were killed in bombings Thursday in Baghdad and other locations.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has warned that various armed groups will try to discredit Iraq's security forces and cause instability as American troops pull back. The majority of U.S. troops left their bases in the cities June 30, in accordance with a security agreement signed by officials late last year.
The worst attack Thursday occurred in Tall Afar in Nineveh province in the north, where a double suicide bombing killed 34 people, prompting a senior Iraqi official to express concern that the country's security forces, now fully responsible for protecting the cities, had been penetrated by armed groups.
In Baghdad, a pair of roadside bombs killed at least seven people in the Shiite district of Sadr City, police said. In the capital's Sunni district of Adhamiya, roadside bombs killed 13 people, with one blast targeting a police patrol.
Militants appear focused on the north, where Arabs and Kurds are locked in a dispute over a 300-mile stretch of land where Saddam Hussein's regime expelled Kurds and settled Arabs in their place. Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region wants to annex those areas, an idea Arabs oppose.
The quarrel is complicated by the valuable oil reserves in Kirkuk province, which all sides want. Concerns have grown that the tensions, if left to fester, could flare into a Kurdish-Arab war.
Provincial council member Yahya Abed Majoub, a member of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party, blamed the attack in Tall Afar on political factions as well as neighboring countries.
"There are groups who want to ignite sectarian and ethnic tensions all over Iraq. Nineveh is just the starting point," Majoub said. "There is a political agenda from inside and outside related to the election."
Kurdish officials blamed the attack on the group Al Qaeda in Iraq. They lashed out at the U.S. military, however, saying it had allowed security to deteriorate by withdrawing. The Kurds have viewed the American forces as a partner and a check on Arab ambitions in the provinces adjoining Iraqi Kurdistan.
Across the north, the Kurdish parties that until last year dominated political life in Nineveh and Kirkuk have been disturbed by the rise of Arab parties in provincial elections and an aggressive stance from Baghdad.
