As Iraq seeks US arms, bombs kill another 55

A dozen bombings in Iraq killed 55 people on Sunday as the prime minister prepares to travel to Washington to seek President Barack Obama's help in confronting a wave of sectarian violence fuelled by Syria's civil war.             

Killings, mostly blamed by the Shi'ite-led government on Sunni Islamists from al Qaeda, are running at daily rates not seen in five years and Nuri al-Maliki will ask Obama on Friday to speed up promised deliveries of drones and F-16 jets that he believes can help staunch the long desert border with Syria.             

Iraq's own security forces, trained and equipped by the U.S. troops who withdrew in late 2011 after a nine-year occupation, have been unable to prevent a surge in violence which has taken the civilian death toll so far this year to about 7,000. Sealing the Syrian border would only address part of the problem.              

On Sunday, police reported 11 vehicles blowing up in mainly Shi'ite Muslim areas in and around Baghdad, killing 41 people in an apparently coordinated series of explosions typical of al Qaeda. A further 14 people were killed when a suicide bomber drove up to a line of soldiers waiting to collect their pay from a bank in the northern city of Mosul and detonated his car.               

There were no immediate claims of responsibility.          

In the worst of the attacks in the Baghdad area, two car bombs exploded moments apart near a busy market in the town of Nahrawan, south of the capital, killing seven.                

In Baladiyat, where another car bomb killed three people, a woman living nearby spoke of a terrifying start to the working week: "I was eating my breakfast when a powerful blast shook the building, shattering the window of my apartment and covering the dining table with glass," said Suad Ahmed.                

"I was terrified. I heard women and children shouting next door. I started to cry. I was afraid of death."              


REUTERS