Attacks, death toll climb as curfew's effects fade

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Sunnis and Shiites traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets in Baghdad well into the night Tuesday, killing at least 68 people one day after authorities lifted a curfew that had briefly calmed sectarian reprisal attacks.

A car bombing after sundown at the Shiite Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood killed 23 and wounded 55. About the same time, a mortar round landed near the Shiite Imam Kadhim shrine in the Kazimiyah neighborhood on the opposite side of the Tigris River, killing one and wounding 10. Another car bomb hit a market opposite the Shiite Timimi mosque in the mostly Shiite Karradah neighborhood, killing six and wounding 16.

A suicide bombing killed 23 people at an east Baghdad gas station, where people had lined up to buy kerosene, but the other attacks appeared to have been in retaliation for assaults on places of worship.

The tit-for-tat sectarian attacks have left hundreds dead nationwide since the Feb. 22 attack on the Askariya shrine in Samarra. The violence has hit Baghdad hardest because the population in the capital is about evenly divided between Shiites and Sunnis.

Among other major attacks Tuesday, the Iraqi Islamic Party reported a bomb hit the Sunni Thou Nitaqain mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood, killing three and wounding 11. Gunmen in two cars opened fire on the Sunni al-Salam mosque in the western Baghdad's Mansour district, killing a guard. Late Tuesday police reported finding the body of Shiite cleric Hani Hadi handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head near a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood.

North of Baghdad, a blast damaged a Sunni mosque where the father of Saddam Hussein was buried in the family's ancestral hometown, Tikrit.

Violence spread beyond the central and northern provinces and the country's capital, to the mostly peaceful Shiite south, where two British soldiers were killed.

The U.S. military also reported Tuesday that an American soldier was killed by small-arms fire in western Baghdad on Monday, bringing the total number of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq to 2,292, according to a count compiled by The Associated Press.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been actively pressuring the factions to cooperate. But Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd and longtime ally of the United States, suggested Khalilzad should refrain from making recommendations on Cabinet positions.