Tensions Are High

Over 50 Dead in Iraq Clashes

In car bombings and police clashes.

Violence raged throughout Iraq on Wednesday, leaving 51 people dead in different parts of the country. Thirty-eight people were killed in a clash between Sunni tribesmen and members of the Iraqi Army that erupted along blocked roads leading to Qara Tappah, a Sunni town northeast of Baghdad. Meanwhile, seven people were killed and 23 others wounded by a car bomb that exploded in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. Increased Sunni backlash against the Shiite-led government seems to be the source of boiling tensions that have led to 100 deaths over the past two days. “Everybody has the feeling that Iraq is becoming a new Syria,” a currency-exchange owner in Mosul told the AP. “We are heading into the unknown ... I think that civil war is making a comeback.”