31일 로이터통신 보도에 따르면 이라크 각지에서 폭발사고가 잇따라 16명이 죽고 76명이 사망했다.
이라크의 수도 바그다드의 「카라다」지구에서는, 정차하고 있던 차가 폭발해, 순례에 방문하고 있던 이슬람교 시아파의 신자들 5명이 사망, 25명이 상처를 입었다.

　또, 이 1시간 정도 전에는, 바그다드 근교에서 그 지방 정부의 사무소가 있는 도로에 정차하고 있던 차가 폭발해 3명이 사망하고 21명이 부상했다.

이 외 , 바그다드 근교에서는, 가옥 2채의 주변에 설치되어 있던 폭탄이 폭발해, 아이와 여성 4명을 포함한 7명이 사망했다.

　31일은 각지에서 이슬람교 시아파의 순례자나 경찰관을 노린 폭탄에 의한 공격이 잇따라, 대략 16명이 사망하고  76명이 부상을 당했다.

범행 성명은 나와 있지 않습니다만, 이슬람교 수니파의 과격 그룹에 의한 정부의 관계자나 시민, 시아파의 신자를 노린 범행의 가능성이 높다고 보여 지고 있다.

　이라크에서는 작년, 미군이 철수한 이후, 종파나 민족의 차이가 나라의 불안정화나 긴장을 부르고 있다.

Bombs kill 16 across Iraq as sectarian strife grows

(Reuters) - Explosions killed at least 16 people and wounded 76 across Iraq on Monday, police said, underlining sectarian and ethnic divisions that threaten to further destabilize the country a year after U.S. troops left.

Tensions between Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year. Militants strike almost daily and have staged at least one big attack a month.

The latest violence followed more than a week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community.

No group claimed responsibility for any of Monday's attacks, which targeted government officials, police patrols and members of both the Sunni and Shi'ite sects.

Seven people from the same Sunni family were killed by a bomb planted near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad.

In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla, also in the south, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing two other people, police said.

"We heard the sound of a big explosion and the windows of our office shattered. We immediately lay on the ground," said 28-year-old Mohammed Ahmed, who works at a hospital near the site of the explosion.

"After a few minutes I stood up and went to the windows to see what happened. I saw flames and people lying on the ground."

In the capital Baghdad, five people were killed by a parked car bomb targeting pilgrims before a Shi'ite religious rite this week, police and hospital sources said.

Although violence is far lower than during the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, about 2,000 people have been killed in Iraq this year following the withdrawal last December of U.S. troops, who led an invasion in 2003 to overthrow Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

SUNNIS PROTEST

Monday's violence also included a series of blasts that killed three people in Iraq's disputed territories, over which both the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region claim jurisdiction.

Two of those deaths were in the oil-producing, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, where a bomb exploded as a police team tried to defuse it.

Baghdad and Kurdistan are locked in a feud over land and oil rights and recently deployed their respective armies to the swathe of territory along their contested internal boundary, where they are currently facing off against one other.

Efforts to ease the standoff stalled when President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence, suffered a stroke and was flown abroad for medical care in December.

Maliki then detained the bodyguards of his Sunni finance minister, which ignited anti-government protests in the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold on the border with Syria.

A lecturer in law at Baghdad University said the protests could help create the conditions for militant Islamist groups like al Qaeda to thrive.

"Raising tension in Anbar and other provinces with mainly Sunni populations is definitely playing into the hands of al Qaeda and other insurgent groups," Ahmed Younis said.

More than 1,000 people protested in the city of Samarra on Monday and rallies continued in Ramadi, centre of the protests, and in Mosul, whe