A prominent Shia politician from the Sadrist political bloc has blamed the Iraqi government for failing to protect religious sites in Baghdad following deadly attacks on Friday which killed and wounded scores of people.
During an interview with the Al Sharqiya news network, Hazim Al-Araji repeatedly said that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki should be held responsible for the car bombs targeting mosques, Shia houses of prayer, and a Sadrist party office, which killed and wounded dozens.
He said Iraqi security Humvees, which usually guarded mosques and houses of prayer in Sadr city, especially during Friday prayers, had been removed.
The attacks came a day after the Iraqi government was forced to respond to severe criticism on the heels of a Los Angeles Times article which revealed that a secret prison housing Sunni prisoners was being operated by the interior ministry in Baghdad.
"What has the government brought us in the past four years except prisons and new graves?" Al-Araji told Al Sharqiya.
"The government on the one hand is not protecting its people and on the other is torturing Iraqis," he said shortly after the Friday bombings. Al-Araji accused the Maliki government of establishing 32 new prisons in Baghdad alone.
He said that the Sadrist bloc - which has long opposed Maliki's re-election - had been aware of several "secret" prisons and had called on the government to disclose their locations and release the detainees. However, he refused to divulge any further information.
Al-Araji also called for the Mahdi Army militia to begin exercising its right to safeguard Islamic shrines and the "vulnerable" people of Sadr City; he said the Mahdi Army should fully cooperate with Iraq's security forces in patrolling parts of Baghdad.
The specter of the Mahdi Army - the military wing of Moqtada Al-Sadr's political bloc was formally disbanded in 2008 - once again patrolling Baghdad streets has many in Iraq fearing a return to sectarian violence, which brought the country to the brink of civil war nearly five years ago.
Tens of thousandsof Iraqis were killed in 2005 and 2006 when militias engaged in revenge attacks, targeting Iraqis of different sects, after an explosion that nearly destroyed the Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra was blamed on Sunni militias.
Meanwhile, in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, car bombs killed and wounded up to 20 people outside the house of a senior anti-terrorism prosecuting judge. According to Iraqi media sources, the judge was not hurt; one of his relatives, however, was severely wounded.
Elsewhere in Anbar, seven members of the same family were found dead, Iraqi police sources said.
In Diwanyia province, south of Baghdad, several members of the Sadrist bloc were arrested in what the interior ministry said was a "joint Iraqi-US security sweep".
Friday's violence comes at the apex of political tensions as the independent electoral commission begins a manual recount of ballots in Baghdad at the urging of the State of Law coalition headed by Maliki.
Iyad Allawi, the leader of the secularist Iraqiya coalition which won the most seats in the March 7 election, said he would not abide by the electoral commission's findings.
He said that any recount should include other areas of Iraq where electoral fraud had been alleged. Allawi said his coalition could call for a new election with UN and international monitoring.