BAGHDAD - The bombing of a Baghdad bus station Thursday pushed the death toll from a weeklong series of blasts near Shiite targets to about 200, calling into question Iraq's ability to provide security as U.S. combat troops slowly withdraw from cities.
The wave of attacks is undermining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's declaration of a "great victory" in the U.S. pullout from urban areas by next Tuesday's deadline. He has declared June 30 a national holiday to be marked with celebrations.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, has pinned his re-election hopes largely on security gains that have driven violence to wartime lows -- an issue that's become his stump speech in an undeclared campaign for a second term. Seven months before national elections, he tells audiences that he's quashed major violence, dismembered al-Qaida and stamped out Shiite militias.
Much of his recent rhetoric has focused on June 30, part of a security agreement that calls for American forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
On Saturday, al-Maliki declared that date a national victory and urged Iraqis to hold steady in the face of more violence, saying "don't worry if some security breach occurs here or there."
A few hours later, suspected Sunni insurgents struck in northern Iraq. A truck bomb packed with nearly a ton of explosives exploded in a Shiite town just outside the ethnically tense city of Kirkuk, killing 82 people. Officials blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attack.
On Monday, shootings and bombings killed more than 30 people in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods. After a smattering of deadly attacks the following day, a massive bomb in the Baghdad Shiite stronghold of Sadr City left 78 people dead on Wednesday.
The Kirkuk bombing and the Sadr City blast were the two deadliest attacks this year.
On Thursday, a bombing at a bus station in a Shiite neighborhood in southwest Baghdad killed at least seven people and wounded 31, police said. Another three bombs and a mortar strike killed two others around the capital. Nine American soldiers were wounded in two roadside bombings against a convoy in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said. And a roadside bombing killed a man in the northern city of Mosul.
That left the death toll since Saturday at about 200.
The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq said the military expected violence ahead of the withdrawal deadline but that he was optimistic the brutal retaliatory sectarian attacks of the past would not resume.
"Nobody said there wasn't going to be violence and tough days," Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby told The Associated Press on Thursday.
"What I've seen so far is calm, deliberate, professional reaction to the bombings," he said. "I think the government has said and done the right things."
He blamed the attacks on those trying to undermine the U.S.-Iraqi partnership, and called the withdrawal from cities a "successful milestone for coalition forces and Iraqi security forces."
While there has been no collective blame for the attacks, the U.S. military believes al-Qaida is struggling to regain a foothold after being beaten back over the past two years. U.S. military officials believe the group has plunged from thousands at its peak in 2006-2007 to hundreds now.
Under that theory, the attacks appear aimed at provoking a violent response from Shiites that could plunge the country into civil war, as they almost did three years ago.
"We think we have beaten back al-Qaida to the point where they are now conducting attacks that are basically propaganda campaigns to make it look as though they are driving us out of Iraqi cities," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday.
Other suspects could include disgruntled Sunnis who joined the Sons of Iraq, a paramilitary force paid by the U.S. to fight al-Qaida in Iraq. Many complain that the government has cracked down on their leadership and not employed them after the U.S. stopped paying them and turned them over to Iraqi control.
Another possibility: members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party, perhaps with foreign backing, trying to discredit the Shiite government and win concessions.
Iraqi officials have maintained for months that remnants of Saddam's party and al-Qaida were cooperating to plan and carry out attacks, despite broad philosophic differences.
Some Iraqi al-Qaida figures are believed to have maintained close ties to Saddam's regime and intelligence service, joining the terror group after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
But while culprits may remain unclear, their targets are not.
The prime minister has remained undaunted, acknowledging violence is likely to continue around June 30.
"This day ... should always be remembered despite the fact that we are waiting for the final day that will end the existence of any soldier on Iraqi land by the end of 2011," he told Iraqi editors late Wednesday as police sifted through the bloody debris of the Sadr City bombing.
"This achievement is a historic one," al-Maliki said. "It wasn't accomplished easily, and no one can say that he alone achieved it, but it is a joint achievement by all Iraqis."
