Iraq police and hospital attacked in triple suicide bombing ahead of Sunday election

But sectarian tensions between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shia are running high, with many fearing a return to the sectarian violence that engulfed the country during the darkest days of the war. Those concerns have been in the air since the first day of campaigning, as the Monitor reported in February.

In yet another sign of heightened Arab-Kurd tension just days from Iraq elections, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan told the Monitor that the governor of the adjoining Arab-majority province will be arrested if he enters Kurdish-controlled areas.

To confront that tension head on, the BBC reports, “Iraqi police and military are mounting a vast nationwide operation involving hundreds of thousands of personnel” aimed at preventing violence before the election.

Reuters reports that while the campaign season has been marked by assassinations and other forms of “political violence,” until today their strategy had succeeded in preventing large attacks. There had been no “major assaults by suicide bombers like those that devastated public buildings and hotels in Baghdad in January, December, October, and August.”

The relative lack of major assaults may be cold comfort, though, as smaller–scale acts of violence have taken their toll. The New York Times says that the country has seen a “spike” in violence during in the last several weeks that has killed twice as many people in February as in January.

Most of the daily attacks are targeted bombings, shootings and assassinations. Since August, militants have also managed to pull off a series of spectacular attacks on government buildings and other institutions, killing hundreds and undermining the public’s confidence in the Iraqi security forces.

Indeed, while Baquba may have seen the first large scale attack of the campaign season, it is not the first high profile triple bombing in recent memory. In January bombers targeted three well-known Baghdad hotels, including one that has been home to several Monitor correspondents, killing more than 30 people.

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