IRBIL, Iraq — A wave of bombings struck majority Shiite Muslim areas of Baghdad and two other Iraqi cities Monday, killing at least four dozen people in an apparently worsening spiral of sectarian bloodletting.
In the deadliest incident, a suicide bomber set off his explosives in a mosque, killing 11 people and wounding more than 30 in a poor, predominantly Shiite section of the capital known as New Baghdad.
The Sunni Muslim extremist group known as Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said was in revenge for a mass shooting Friday of Sunni worshippers at a mosque in Diyala province, east of Baghdad, that left 73 people dead.
Four other car bombs exploded in neighborhoods across Baghdad, killing 21 people, while deadly blasts also shook the Shiite holy city of Karbala and the majority Shiite city of Hillah, south of Baghdad.
The attacks came on the day that Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi held his first official news conference and called for national unity as the country struggles to stop the advance of Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in the lands it controls in Iraq and Syria.
Al-Abadi condemned the Diyala mosque attack, which has widely been blamed on Shiite militias loyal to the government, and called for the militias to come under Baghdad’s control and cease acting independently. The Diyala attack prompted leading Sunni politicians to pull out of crucial talks on forming a new government, which al-Abadi must complete by Sept. 10.
“All the massacres being committed against the civilians by the armed groups and militias are condemned and rejected,” al-Abadi said.
The United Nations on Monday accused Islamic State militants of “appalling, widespread and systematic deprivation of human rights,” including targeted killings, abductions and sexual abuse in areas under their control.
U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said the Sunni extremists were singling out religious and ethnic minorities, including Christians, Yazidis, ethnic Turkmen and other groups, as they promulgate a fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam. Pillay said the U.N. has received credible reports that hundreds of Iraqis have been abducted and that many have been executed for refusing to convert to Islam.
