By Mohammed Tawfeeq
(CNN) — At least 27 people were killed and more than 50 others were wounded Tuesday when nine car bombs exploded in largely Shiite areas in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, police said.
The attacks unfolded within an hour shortly before sunset, police said. The explosions took place in Karrada, al-Alam, Talbiya, Abu Dsheer, Al-Maamil, Zafaraniya, al-Shurta Rabaa and Skaniya, police said.
The deadliest attack was in al-Shurta Rabaa, in southwestern Baghdad when a car bomb in a busy shopping area killed six people and wounded 12 others.
At dawn, gunmen stormed a house of a Sunni family in Arab-Jabour district in southern Baghdad and shot dead five family members, police said.
This comes as Sunni-Shiite frictions have escalated since an April incident in Hawija, in northern Iraq. That’s where Iraqi security forces raided a site used by Sunni protesters to demonstrate against the Shiite-led government.
Sunnis have felt politically marginalized under Shiite President Nuri al-Maliki, whose government fears that Sunni Islamists, who’ve been involved in fighting in neighboring Syria, are now targeting it.
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