BAGHDAD — Bombings blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq tore through market areas in Baghdad and outside the capital Tuesday, killing nearly 60 people and shattering weeks of relative calm in Sunni-dominated areas.
The bloodshed in four cities struck directly at U.S. claims that the Sunni insurgency is waning and being replaced by Shiite militia violence as a major threat.
The deadliest blasts took place in Baqubah and Ramadi, two cities where the U.S. military has claimed varying degrees of success in getting Sunnis to turn against al-Qaeda.
In Baqubah, a parked car exploded about 11:30 a.m. in front of a restaurant across the street from the central courthouse and other government offices.
Many of the victims were on their way to the court, at the restaurant or in cars passing through the area.
At least 40 people were killed and 70 wounded, according to hospital officials, while the U.S. military said 35 Iraqi citizens were killed, including a policeman, and 66 wounded. It said the blast destroyed three buses and damaged 10 shops.
The attack was the deadliest in Baqubah since The Associated Press began tracking Iraqi casualties in late April 2005.
The U.S. military said Tuesday that attacks in Baqubah have dropped noticeably since June. But a series of assassinations and other high-profile attacks have occurred in and around the city this year, and U.S. commanders have consistently warned that al-Qaeda-led insurgents continue to pose a serious danger.
According to an AP count, at least 126 Iraqis have been killed in war-related violence in Baqubah in 2008; the majority, 65, were killed in 10 separate bombings. At least 818 Iraqis were killed in war-related violence in the city last year, up slightly from 793 the year before.
Baqubah and Ramadi were strongholds of al-Qaeda in Iraq and saw some of the fiercest fighting of the U.S.-led war until local Sunni tribal leaders fed up with the terrorist network’s brutal tactics joined forces with the U.S. military against it last year.
Tuesday’s bombing in Ramadi came about an hour after the Baqubah attack.
A suicide attacker on a motorcycle drove up to a kebab restaurant, went inside and detonated his explosives vest, killing at least 13 people, including three off-duty policemen and two children, and wounding 20, according to police and hospital officials.
The blast in central Baghdad also took place shortly after midday. A parked car bomb targeted a police patrol, killing four civilians and wounding 15 others, police said.
The U.S. military condemned the bombings in Baqubah, Ramadi and Baghdad and said they appeared to have been carried out by al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The fourth bombing took place in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. At 3:45 p.m., a double car bombing wounded three Iraqi policemen and 15 civilians, the U.S. military said.
U.S.-allied Sunni fighters have found themselves increasingly targeted by violence and frustrated by a perceived lack of support by the Shiite-dominated government.
The purported leader of the al-Qaeda umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, called on those who had switched sides to return to the insurgency. He made his statement in an Internet audiotape posted Tuesday on a militant website.
In southern Iraq, three aides to Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, escaped assassination in separate attacks Tuesday, although two of them were seriously wounded, police said.
The attacks came four days after a top aide to Muqtada al-Sadr was assassinated in Najaf.
