Iraq's Al Qaeda attacks higher-impact targets

The site of Saturday's attack, for example, is across the Tigris River from the area assigned to one of the new US brigades in the Baghdad area.

The military is charged with cutting off the flow of explosives into Baghdad over the major southerly highway there, as well as with disrupting insurgent cells from planning attacks.

At the same time, incidents of retaliation against Sunni civilians for rejecting Al Qaeda are multiplying.

On Saturday, a sheikh of the Jabour tribe and several relatives were killed by Al Qaeda in the Mohammediyah village between Ramadi and Fallujah, in Anbar Province, after they called for cooperation with official security forces against Al Qaeda, the Al Hurra television station reported. Execution killings are also increasing in Sunni Fallujah, suggesting rising Sunni-on-Sunni violence.

"It is becoming more common for Al Qaeda to strike back in revenge at people who dare to turn against them," says Iyad Samarrai, a Sunni member of Iraq's parliament.

At the same time, the multiplying bomb attacks on infrastructure like bridges and electrical networks, as well as on public places like markets, is an attempt to feed sectarian divisions while convincing all Iraqis that the government is weak and ineffectual, he says.

"We don't know exactly who is behind these attacks, whether it is Al Qaeda or other groups or even the intelligence of some other countries, but we can say in any case that it is done to show that the government is unable to protect the people and these sites," Mr. Samarrai says.

This weekend two bridges spanning the Tigris River in the south of Baghdad were hit by truck bombs. The two blasts follow last month's bombings of the historic Sarafiyah bridge in north Baghdad and the Jadriyah bridge in the south. The Sarafiyah bridge, a key link between Shiite and Sunni banks of the Tigris, collapsed into the river.

"Al Qaeda's objective for a long time has been to drive a wedge between Iraq's sectarian communities, between the Shiites and the Sunnis, and this tactic advances that by making connections between them more difficult," says Mr. Dodge.

The area south of Baghdad, like Diyala to the north, presents different challenges than the more uniformly Sunni Anbar Province to both Sunni insurgents on the one hand, and the Iraqi and US militaries on the other, Dodge says.

"The population is much more mixed, so the sectarian divide is layered over everything. That frustrates the ability of the Iraqi authorities to establish a presence," he says, but "Al Qaeda has also found it more difficult to operate there."

The mayor of Mahmoudiya, Mouayad Fadhil, reported Sunday that people in his town are cooperating with authorities and offering any information they have on Saturday's attack.

Mr. Fadhil and his town are no strangers to the ugliest sides of this war. Last March Mahmoudiya was the scene of a rape and killings by US soldiers that rocked the US military and a violence-numbed Iraq. Six US soldiers took part in the rape and murder of a teenage girl and the murder of her sister and parents.

Dodge says Saturday's attack demonstrates Al Qaeda's ability to adapt to circumstances and bounce back from setbacks. "They've been forced to change their tactics and forced to change their areas of geographical operation," he says, "but they are a long way from defeated."

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