Iraq car bomb hits interior ministry
At least six people killed and 34 others wounded in suicide bomb attack in Baghdad following series of blasts on Thursday
At least six people have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack on Iraq's interior ministry, the latest since a crisis erupted between the country's Shia-led government and Sunni leaders a week ago.
Shia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the arrest of Iraq's Sunni vice-president last Monday and asked parliament to fire his deputy, a move that threatens a new wave of sectarian strife just after the withdrawal of the last US troops.
The blast occurred when the bomber drove his vehicle into a security cordon outside the interior ministry in central Baghdad, detonating an explosion that left dead and wounded on the ground and set fire to nearby vehicles, police said.
The attack on Bab al-Sharji Street followed Thursday's wave of explosions in mainly Shia areas across the Iraqi capital, in which at least 72 people were killed.
"When I went outside I found my colleagues, some of them were killed, others were on the ground, many cars were burned, the policeman on the watchtower looked like he was killed when he was hit in the head," Zaid Raheem, a police guard, said.
Six people, including four policemen, were killed and 34 others were wounded, police and hospital sources said.
A senior police source said authorities believed insurgents were targeting the ministry because of the announcement of the arrest warrant for the vice -president, Tariq al-Hashimi.
He has left Baghdad for semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, where he is unlikely to be handed over to central government officials immediately.
The crisis threatens to scuttle an uneasy power-sharing government that splits posts among the Shia National Alliance coalition, the mostly Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc and the Kurdish political movement.
Iraq's Sunni minority ha! ve felt marginalised since the rise of the Shia majority after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, and many Sunnis feel the political deal has pushed them aside.
Turmoil in Iraq would have a wider impact in a region where a crisis in neighbouring Syria is taking on a more sectarian tone and Shia Iran, Turkey and Sunni Arab Gulf states are jockeying for influence.
US officials, diplomats and Iraqi politicians have been in talks to end the dispute that threatens to push Iraq back into the kind of sectarian violence that took it to the edge of civil war a few years ago.
US vice-president Joe Biden spoke with Maliki and Masoud Barzani of the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government about the spat, urging dialogue among leaders, and expressing condolences over violence in Baghdad.
Biden played a diplomatic role during the US military's departure from Iraq, travelling to the country and discussing signs of rising sectarian tension with Iraqi leaders.
US forces withdrew fully from Iraq after almost nine years on 18 December.
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