IRAQ: Suicide bombers struck outside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone yesterday, killing 16 people, close to where parliament met in heated session to hear at least one lawmaker warn that civil war was close at hand.
Since parliament last met last week, dozens have been killed in the capital in bombings and some of the worst attacks yet seen by sectarian gunmen; militants in a Sunni area ambushed a bus full of Shia mourners, killing 10 of them yesterday.
Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shia leading a US-backed national unity coalition, condemned an "awful crime" by terrorists "trying to incite sectarian strife".
An al-Qaeda-led group posted a video on the internet of two mutilated corpses. It said they were US soldiers kidnapped and killed last month and claimed they were killed to avenge the alleged rape and murder of a local teenager by US troops.
On a positive note, the main political bloc of the once dominant Sunni minority ended a week-old boycott of parliament, saying it had encouraging news about the fate of a woman member kidnapped in a Shia neighbourhood 10 days ago.
As night fell on Baghdad, however, in a pattern seen for the last few days, there was more violence. A car bomb in the western Alam district killed five and wounded 17, police said, while clashes erupted between militia fighters and residents in the violent Sunni area of Amriya.
In Baquba, north of Baghdad, police said a Shia mosque in the town's Tahrir district had been destroyed in an explosion.
Two suicide bombers and a roadside bomb killed 15 civilians and an Iraqi policeman outside the main public entrance to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone government and diplomatic compound, the US military said.
Addressing a heated session on a day in which at least 30 other people were killed around Baghdad and an Iraqi diplomat was kidnapped, Ali al-Adib, from the prime minister's Dawa party said: "The country is sliding fast towards civil war."