Baghdad, Iraq – The feared resumption of sectarian violence erupted Sunday in a Baghdad Shiite slum when bombers blew apart two markets shortly before sundown, killing at least 44 people and wounding about 200.
The bloody assaults on Sadr City came only minutes after Iraqi political leaders said the new parliament will convene Thursday, three days earlier than planned, as the U.S. ambassador pushed to break a stalemate over naming a unity government.
The attackers struck with car bombs, including a suicide driver, and mortars at the peak shopping time, destroying dozens of market stalls and vehicles when the explosives ripped through the poor neighborhood as residents were buying food for their evening meals.
The neighborhood was quickly sealed off by Mahdi Army militiamen of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr amid pandemonium as residents searched wildly for survivors and put charred corpses into ambulances and trucks to be taken away.
Smoke billowed into the evening sky, and angry young men kicked the decapitated head of the suicide attacker, whose body lay in the street at a shop door.
The nature of the attack bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has said it hoped to start a Shiite-Sunni civil conflict.
Police said they defused a third car bomb, likely preventing an even higher death toll.
Bomb blasts, rockets and gunfire also killed at least 12 other people – 10 in Baghdad – and wounded 34 Sunday. The low thud of mortar fire periodically rumbled over the city.
The Sadr City bombers struck shortly after U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and leaders of Iraq’s main ethnic and religious blocs concluded a news conference to announce agreement to move up the first session of the new parliament to Thursday.
The political leaders said they would open marathon meetings today in an attempt to reach agreement on a new government.
Khalilzad said he would be available to join the talks at any time.
Among the issues to be discussed are how many positions various blocs will get in the new government, which will fill key posts, and the government’s program of action.
The first parliamentary session will take place three months after the Dec. 15 elections and a month after the results were certified. It sets in motion a 60-day deadline for the legislature to elect a new president, approve the nomination of a prime minister and sign off on his Cabinet.
Khalilzad said a permanent government needed to be in place quickly to fill the “vac uum in authority.”
