BAGHDAD — Shattering a months-long period of relative calm in the capital, five car bombs exploded in different neighborhoods around Baghdad on Sunday morning, killing at least six people and wounding 30. The military defused another three car bombs.
Other parts of the country have been hit by large-scale attacks recently, mainly against security forces and religious pilgrims, but Baghdad had been spared. Within a few hours Sunday morning that distinction blew apart like the angry scraps of twisted metal strewn across the city’s busy streets.
The attacks began shortly after 7, despite heightened security for the Shiite holiday of Arbain, an annual magnet for sectarian violence.
The bombs struck Sunni neighborhoods as well as Shiite ones. Two appeared directed at security forces, one at Iranian pilgrims marching in commemoration of Arbain. Targets of the other two were unclear. At least two of the cars used were taxis, which detonated when police officers were nearby, suggesting that they were set off remotely by people watching the scene.
The use of taxis “is a new technique,” said a police officer from the bomb squad, noting that they draw less attention than private cars at checkpoints or when parked. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Morning reports from the Ministry of the Interior put the death toll at eight, but the ministry revised the number downward during the day.
Before Sunday’s attacks, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, deputy commanding general for operations of American forces in Iraq, had credited Iraqi security forces for keeping major attacks out of Baghdad in recent months, saying that their successes had forced extremists to strike elsewhere.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who began his second term in office last month, had made security a main plank of his electoral campaign, and Shiite religious marches, which take place several times during the year, test the police and army’s effectiveness.
But he has yet to appoint heads of the ministries that oversee the police and military, a fact one lawmaker blamed for the recent attacks. “Such attacks will continue as long as the security ministries are without leaders,” said Udai Awad, a member of Parliament allied with the fiery cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Violence here remains lower than in previous years, but in the last week devastating attacks have struck in Tikrit and Baquba north of Baghdad, and Karbala to the south. The attacks followed large-scale arrests of terrorist suspects, and may have been intended as retaliation.
On Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of police recruits in Tikrit, killing at least 49 people and wounding 119. On Wednesday, an ambulance loaded with 450 pounds of explosives detonated outside a police headquarters in Baquba, killing at least five people and wounding 76. On Thursday, three car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously on the roads to Karbala, where as many as 10 million Shiites gather to commemorate the death of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and a central figure in Shiite Islam, killing at least 52 people and wounding three times as many.
Lt. Omer Ahmed of the Iraqi police said that the choice of targets in both Sunni and Shiite areas this week suggested the bombings were the work of foreign militants trying to inflame sectarian tensions . “We need to change our strategic officers and plans,” he said. “We have been working according to what we were taught by Americans, not according to the real truth — that we are facing a kind of enemy who is playing on sectarian chords for the mass elimination of Iraqis without exceptions.”
On Saturday, security forces announced the arrest of a leader in the Sunni Awakening, the government-backed militia composed in part of former insurgents, for the attack against the Shiite pilgrims. Awakening leaders have long been frustrated by slow progress in being hired by the security forces or other government agencies.
Yasir Ghazi, Omar al-Jawoshy and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting.