Anbar slipping from govt grip

BAGHDAD: A wave of attacks in Iraq, including car bombs in Baghdad, killed 50 people Wednesday as militants took more territory from security forces in crisis-hit Anbar province.
The twin setbacks for authorities, grappling with Iraq’s worst period of unrest since the country emerged from a sectarian war that killed tens of thousands, come just months before parliamentary elections.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon and other diplomats have urged Iraq’s leaders to seek political reconciliation to resolve nationwide violence and the standoff in Anbar, but Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has ruled out dialogue with militants as his forces have launched wide-ranging security operations.
But the operations, which authorities say have led to the death or capture of several militants affiliated with the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), have not stopped the bloodshed.
Eight car bombs hit civilian targets in majority-Shiite or mixed neighborhoods of the capital, killing 27.
One of them targeted a packed market in the neighborhood of Shaab.
Another detonated outside a restaurant on Sanaa Street, killing three people and badly damaging the restaurant and nearby shops and cars, an AFP journalist said.
Windows of nearby shops were shattered, the restaurant’s ceiling partially caved in and blood and mangled vehicle parts were scattered around the scene.
The Baghdad carnage could have been much worse, with police saying they managed to thwart four suicide bombers with explosives-rigged vehicles. A suicide bombing at a funeral in Buhruz, in restive and religiously mixed Diyala province north of Baghdad, killed 16 people and wounded 20, officials said.
The funeral was for a member of the Sahwa.
Seven others, including three soldiers, were killed in and around the northern city of Mosul.