According to the reports, massive explosions all over Iraq today:
More than 100 people were killed in a string of bombings and ambushes in Iraq today in the worst large scale violence since May and June, and the Al Qaeda group in Iraq said that it was launching a nationwide campaign of suicide bombings in retaliation for an American-Iraqi military offensive against insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar.
The Al Qaeda statement, published on a militants’ Web site, did not claim responsibility for a specific attack but said: “We would like to congratulate the Muslim nation and inform it the battle to avenge the Sunnis of Tal Afar has begun,” according to Reuters.
Some of the attacks today were directed against Shiites, signifying they were the latest in a campaign by Sunni insurgents who are bent on exploiting sectarian divisions across Iraq.
Two militant groups had issued warnings of attacks against Shiites in retaliation for the offensive in Tal Afar. Although Kurdish pesh merga fighters took the lead among the Iraqi forces in that attack, most rank and file Army soldiers are Shiite, as is Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who ordered the campaign in Tal Afar.
The most serious attack took place in the Khadhimiya district of northern Baghdad at a place where large numbers of laborers typically gather in the morning in hopes of being hired for the day. A suicide bomber lured a crowd of men eager for labor to his minivan, and then blew it up just before 7 a.m., killing at least 80 people and wounding 162 in Khadhimiya, a Shiite neighborhood.
It continues to bewilder me that this small minority group chooses to attempt to provoke a civil war against the majority…