[quote] By STEVEN LEE MYERS Published: April 23, 2010 BAGHDAD — A series of bombings on Friday struck mosques, a market and a shop in Baghdad, as well as the homes of a prosecutor and police officers in western Iraq, killing dozens, only five days after a joint Iraqi-American raid killed the top two leaders of the insurgency. Iraq’s leaders had hailed the killings and arrests of insurgent leaders this week as a devastating blow to the group known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but warned that retaliation was almost certain to come. It was not clear that the group, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, was behind the latest jolt of violence. The attacks were the worst of an intermittent wave of bombings since the parliamentary election on March 7, providing a violent backdrop to stalled efforts to finalize the results of the vote and form a new government. According to preliminary accounts by the Ministry of the Interior, 12 bombs — including car bombs and improvised explosive devices, but not suicide bombers, an insurgent hallmark — killed at least 50 people in Baghdad and wounded more than 100. In Anbar, the sprawling mostly Sunni province to the west, seven people died when a series of explosions struck houses in a small village. The deadliest attacks struck near three mosques in Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, just as worshipers departed Friday afternoon prayers. Those attacks, involving car bombs, occurred near the headquarters of the political movement led by the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The movement’s candidates did well in last month’s election, giving them increased leverage in forming a government its leaders say should not include the incumbent prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The attacks came a day after senior Iraqi officials said that the previously undisclosed arrest of a senior insurgent leader in Baghdad last month had provided a breakthrough that has allowed Iraqi and American security forces to kill or arrests dozens of the group’s leaders and fighters. The deaths of the two leaders and the killings and arrests that followed — with 12 more suspects seized in raids in Baghdad and Mosul, in the north, on Thursday — may be the most significant blow yet to a deadly movement that only a few months ago appeared to be regrouping, the officials said. The officials asserted that the series of raids, and the apparent cooperation of the leader arrested last month, had devastated the group’s leadership ranks, its financing and possibly its links to Al Qaeda’s international leaders on the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The map of the entire insurgency in Iraq is now clear to us,� Sharwan al-Waili, the minister of national security affairs, said Thursday. The lasting impact on Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remains to be seen, given the group’s resilience and previous overstatements by American and Iraqi officials of its imminent demise. Many details of the recent raids remain secret, and thus impossible to verify. Mr. Maliki’s government is also eager to portray itself as strong on security as negotiations continue to form a coalition after the March 7 election. Any significant weakening of the group could help smooth the Obama administration’s primary goal in Iraq: the steady withdrawal of combat forces by the end of the summer. The withdrawal has appeared increasingly uncertain because of the political impasse over the election. Mr. Waili and the senior Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, said that the intelligence trove resulted from the arrest on March 11 of a man who was called Al Qaeda’s “governor� of Baghdad, Manaf Abdul Rahim al-Rawi. His arrest had not been previously announced, as Iraqi security officials quietly gathered what General Atta called “a huge quantity of important documents and information that were and are useful for the security agencies.� Mr. Waili said Mr. Rawi’s arrest had led to the “dismantling of the entire network� over the month that followed, culminating in Sunday’s raid and another in Mosul on Tuesday that killed Ahmed al-Obeidi, said to be the group’s leader in three provinces in northern Iraq. With the arrest of the Baghdad governor, it appeared that the group’s principal leadership had been sundered. “We have reliable information indicating that there is a state of confusion among Al Qaeda now,� General Atta said at a news conference. In the past, however, new leaders have sprung up to replace those killed. General Atta also warned that retaliatory attacks were possible. General Atta said that Mr. Rawi had planned and supervised a series of catastrophic attacks in Baghdad that began last August on government buildings, universities, hotels and, before the election, polling stations. Those bombings killed hundreds, disrupted government functions and heightened anxiety across the capital. The successes in striking Al Qaeda’s leadership appeared to reflect improved coordination between the American military and Iraqi forces. [/quote] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html