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"Al-Maliki is pushing my country to reach a turning point with deeply sectarian dimension," the Sunni vice president told CNN on Sunday during an interview in the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, where he has fled so that government forces loyal to the Shiite prime minister cannot execute an arrest warrant for him on charges of running a death squad.

He expressed concern that Americans "will face the same problem as they faced in 2003," when a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein and unleashing a wave of sectarian violence.

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Sadrists would back no confidence vote in Iraq PM

Influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Wednesday that his parliamentary bloc would back a motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki if that gave it the support of a majority of MPs.

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BAGHDAD (AP) — An onslaught of bombings and shootings killed 82 people across Iraq on Monday, officials said, in the nation's deadliest day so far this year

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Iraq says July deadliest month in nearly two years

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Iraq on Thursday accused Turkey of interfering in its internal affairs after Turkey's foreign minister paid a surprise visit to a northern Iraqi city seen as a testing ground for whether Iraq's sectarian leaders can ever reach reconciliation.

Ahmet Davutoglu visited the city of Kirkuk, where an estimated 850,000 Kurds, Turkomen and Arabs uneasily co-exist — and that Iraqi Kurds hope to annex into their autonomous region. Turkey, Iran and Syria have long feared that Kurdish rule of Kirkuk would encourage separatist sentiment within their Kurdish minorities.

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Outside View: Iraq headed toward civil war

The death sentence passed two weeks ago by Iraqi courts on Vice President of Iraq Tariq al-Hashemi is another milestone on that country's pathway to disaster and civil war.

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Iraq urges Arab states to use oil against US, Israel

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The head of Iraq's intelligence academy and two of his bodyguards were killed in an attack Saturday, though conflicting reports emerged as to how the incident unfolded.

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118 killed in bloody two days for Iraq

A bloody two days of violence in Iraq left 118 people dead, with 99 of them killed in clashes and attacks involving security forces, protesters and their supporters, officials said on Wednesday.

More than 240 people were wounded in the same period, most of them in protest-related unrest, which prompted two Sunni ministers to quit and has sent tensions in the country soaring.

The violence, which began with clashes at a protest site in northern Iraq after security forces moved in, is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations in Sunni areas that erupted more than four months ago.

Protesters have called for the resignation of Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and railed against the alleged targeting of their community by the authorities.

The trouble began early on Tuesday when clashes broke out after security forces moved into an area near Hawijah in northern Iraq, where protests have been held since January.

The initial fighting killed 53 people, while a series of revenge attacks left another 27 dead on Tuesday, and 15 more were killed in apparently unrelated unrest.

Two Sunni ministers quit in the wake of the initial violence, bringing to four the number of Sunni cabinet members who have resigned since March 1.

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Assassinations Grow as Iraqi Elections Near

In the first Iraqi elections since the American troop withdrawal, Sunni candidates are being attacked and killed in greater numbers than in recent campaigns, raising concerns in Washington over Iraq’s political stability and the viability of a democratic system the United States has heavily invested in over years of war and diplomacy.

At least 15 candidates, all members of the minority Sunni community, have been assassinated — some apparently by political opponents, others by radical Sunni militants. Many others have been wounded or kidnapped or have received menacing text messages or phone calls demanding that they withdraw.

By going after members of their own sect, radical Sunnis aligned with Al Qaeda are effectively seeking to destabilize the Shiite-led government, making an already angry and alienated community fearful to participate in national governance. At the same time, it appears intra-Sunni rivalries are inadvertently aiding the radical cause, as Sunnis kill political adversaries in their quest for power.

In the latest surge of violence, more than 20 attacks around the country on Monday killed close to 50 people and wounded nearly 200. Two schools in Hilla that were to serve as polling sites were blown up by homemade bombs; no one was killed, but the explosions suggested that insurgents might be intent on attacking voters and not just candidates. Security officials in Hilla quickly declared a state of emergency, and said they had intelligence that militants were preparing to target more polling stations in the region.

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At least 10 Iraqi policemen and nine Sunni militants killed in Mosul clashes (Reuters)

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Iraq PM points to Syria over
deadly "sectarian" strife

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday pointed to the civil war in Syria for the return of sectarian strife to Iraq, as Kurdish forces deploying near a disputed northern city further raised tensions.

More than 215 people have been killed in five days of bloody violence that began with clashes between security forces and protesters in the north on Tuesday and have sent tensions soaring.

Sectarian strife "came back to Iraq, because it began in another place in this region," Maliki said in televised remarks, in an apparent reference to Syria.

Kurdish peshmerga security forces have deployed near the northern city of Kirkuk, part of a swathe of territory that the autonomous Kurdistan region wants to incorporate over Baghdad's strong objections.

"After consultations with the governor of Kirkuk, there has been a decision for peshmerga forces to fill the vacuums in general, and especially around the city of Kirkuk," Jabbar Yawar, secretary general of Iraqi Kurdistan's peshmerga ministry, said in a statement.

Yawar said the deployments were aimed at combating militants and protecting civilians, but a high-ranking Iraqi army officer said soldiers had been put on alert, and that "the army sees the move of the peshmerga as a [political] manoeuvre and not to fill any vacuum."

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Iraq on the verge of another civil war?