Two of the gunmen asked passengers one by one where they were from and then shot 14 dead in their seats, leaving one woman alive with a simple message: “Go back and tell them how we are killing you.”

Last week’s bus attack, whose details were recounted by local officials, strengthened fears that Iraq is edging back into sectarian mayhem, with al Qaeda again striking at will in a drive to provoke civil war.

Baghdad has now banned off-duty officials, police and soldiers from using the desert highway without an escort.

More than 70 people were killed on Monday alone when car bombs and attacks hit cities across northern Iraq. One assault on a police base involving suicide bombers, rockets and gunmen killed 40 people, mostly police and soldiers.

Invigorated by Syria’s Sunni-led revolt and fed by Sunni frustrations at home, al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing and other insurgents pose a violent challenge to Baghdad’s Shi’ite-led government.

Iraqi officials say that in the desert near Syria men with black jihadi flags are reclaiming their former strongholds to use as staging posts in their deadly campaign.

Suicide bombers wearing explosive belts – a signature of al Qaeda – are hitting with a frequency not seen in years, implying there is no shortage of recruits ready to sacrifice themselves.

Nearly 2,000 people have died in attacks since April, according to U.N. figures, in the worst spike of bloodshed since Shi’ite-Sunni bloodletting eased five years ago.

Al Qaeda’s local wing, Islamic State of Iraq, may spearhead the violence, but other Sunni armed groups are also resurgent, including the Naqshbandi army, an expanding network of Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party members and ex-army officers.

SHIFTING ALLIANCES

A few years ago Sunni tribal leaders turned on al Qaeda, disgusted by its indiscriminate killings and cadre of foreign fighters, helping U.S. troops defeat the insurgency in Anbar.

But with the Americans gone, Iraqi forces no longer have the air cover and intelligence that U.S. forces once supplied.

Iraqi political tensions have also favored an al Qaeda revival, with Sunni resentment against perceived discrimination by the Shi’ite-led government fuelling insurgent recruitment.

Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki now accuses some Sunni tribal sheikhs of sheltering al Qaeda militants.

“There are those who want to incite sedition by targeting a certain sect,” he said in an interview this week. “Yes, al Qaeda has a presence, but the painful thing is some tribes do not cooperate. These gangs are protected by some tribes.”

Al Qaeda’s revival in Iraq worries Washington, which pulled out its troops at the end of 2011. Shi’ite leaders in Baghdad also fear that the conflict in Syria may bring to power Sunni Islamists who might encourage Sunni rebels in Iraq.

Iraqi government officials say Shi’ite militias, which once engaged in tit-for-tat killings with Sunni insurgents, have yet to be drawn into a new cycle of sectarian revenge.

Sunni mosques, neighborhoods and tribal leaders have also been attacked – in some cases perhaps by al Qaeda provocateurs. But some Sunni leaders blame Shi’ite militias.

Al Qaeda and other insurgents no longer control vast areas or towns as in the heyday of their campaign against U.S. troops, and Sunni support for armed rebellion is far from universal.

Yet anger among minority Sunnis over perceived slights and abuses has deepened, leading to months of mass protests. After a deadly army raid on a protest camp in the town of Hawija in April, Sunni gunmen appeared in Falluja, Mosul and other cities and fought street battles with government forces.

One Sunni lawmaker, who asked not to be named, said militants were steadily gaining strength. “They are recruiting now among the protesters, and the government has no response.”

Al Qaeda fighters use abandoned hamlets in Anbar’s Jazira desert for safe haven and temporary shelter, often with the compliance of local communities, security officials say.

“Tribes won’t revolt against them as long as they do not target their people,” said one senior police officer who asked not to be named. “They say protecting soldiers and policemen is not their responsibility, it’s the government’s.”

SADDAM’S MEN

Apart from al Qaeda, which is partly focused on helping fellow-Sunni militants in Syria, other groups are trying to channel Sunni discontent into armed revolt against Baghdad.

In January, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, head of the Baath party and of the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, formed in 2007 to fight U.S. troops, urged Sunnis to rise against Maliki.

The Naqshbandi army plays on Sunni grievances over a law used by Iraq’s Shi’ite leadership to exclude Baathists and officers of Saddam’s disbanded army from public office. Limited concessions by Maliki have done little to defuse the anger.

Naqshbandi is now extending its influence beyond its traditional base in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, often in coordination with al Qaeda, security officials say.

Despite – or perhaps because of – its associations with deposed strongman Saddam, Naqshbandi has some advantages over the Islamist militants linked to global jihad, according to Ramzy Mardini, at the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies.

“(It) is an indigenous movement and better integrated in Iraq’s Sunni landscape than al Qaeda in Iraq,” he said.

(Editing by Alistair Lyon)

No group claimed responsibility for the day-long attacks, most of them in northern Iraq, but officials blame much of the violence that has killed nearly 2,000 people since April on Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda’s local wing.

Weeks of bloodshed have accompanied rising political tensions between Iraq’s majority Shi’ite leaders and members of the Sunni community, who believe they have been marginalized since the fall of Saddam Hussein after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

But war in neighboring Syria, where Shi’ite Iran and the region’s Sunni Gulf states are backing opposing sides, has also put pressure on Iraq’s own balance among Shi’ite, Sunni and ethnic Kurds who share power in a fragile government.

Markets in two northern Iraqi towns were hit early on Monday, police said. Later attacks targeted security forces. In the northern city of Mosul, suicide bombers and rocket fire struck police headquarters, killing 24, many of them police and soldiers.

“I was selling watermelon and suddenly I heard a powerful blast at the entrance to the market. I fled from the dust and smoke when a second blast turned the place into hell,” said Hassan Hadi, a farmer wounded in one of the market attacks.

“I was hit in my leg and lay down in shock.”

Most of the apparently coordinated violence hit the north of the country and included at least eight suicide blasts and gun battles at military bases or checkpoints.

Two roadside bombs also exploded near a cafe, killing four people in the Shi’ite district of Sadr City, northeastern Baghdad, police said.

Suicide attacks are the signature of al Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, Islamic State of Iraq, and their growing frequency, in particular so many in one day, appears to indicate the extent to which Islamist insurgents are regrouping.

Invigorated by Syria’s mostly Sunni revolt and tapping into bitter Iraqi Sunni discontent with the Shi’ite-led government, al Qaeda’s local wing is regaining some ground lost during its war with U.S. troops, who left Iraq in December 2011.

Since December, thousands of Sunnis have protested against the government. But an Iraqi army raid on a Sunni protest camp in the town of Hawija in April reignited violence.

Monthly death tolls since then have been the worst since the inter-communal bloodletting five years ago that killed tens of thousands, partitioned Baghdad into districts based on religious sect and drove Iraq to the edge of civil war.

At the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence, the monthly death count sometimes topped 3,000.

Iraqi military forces are better equipped and trained than at the peak of the conflict, but they lack the comprehensive intelligence resources and air cover capability to track insurgents that they enjoyed under U.S. military guidance.

(Reporting by Reuters correspondents in Baquba and Mosul, Gazwan Hassan and Mustafa Mahmoud, Suadad al-Salhy and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Xavier Briand)

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the last two months as al Qaeda and Sunni Islamist insurgents, invigorated by the Sunni-led revolt in Syria and by Sunni discontent at home, seek to revive the kind of all-out inter-communal conflict that killed tens of thousands five years ago.

“That is a sad record,” Martin Kobler, the U.N. envoy in Baghdad, said in a statement. “Iraqi political leaders must act immediately to stop this intolerable bloodshed.”

This week multiple bombings battered Shi’ite and Sunni areas of the capital Baghdad, killing nearly 100 people. Most of he 1,045 people killed in May were civilians, U.N. figures showed.

The U.N. toll is higher than a Reuters estimate of 600 deaths based on police and hospital officials. Such counts can vary depending on sourcing, while numbers often increase beyond initial estimates as wounded people die.

The renewed bloodletting reflects worsening tensions between Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government and the Sunni minority, seething with resentment at their treatment since Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 and later hanged.

Al Qaeda’s local wing and other Sunni armed groups are now regaining ground lost during their battle with U.S. troops who pulled out in December 2011 nearly a decade after the invasion that empowered the long-suppressed Shi’ite majority.

At the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence, when Baghdad was carved up between Sunni and Shi’ite gunmen who preyed on rival communities, the monthly death count sometimes topped 3,000.

Officials in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government say al Qaeda’s wing, Islamic State of Iraq, and Naqshbandi insurgents linked to ex-officers in Saddam’s army, are now trying to provoke a Shi’ite militia reaction.

Security officials believe Shi’ite militias such as Mehdi Army, Asaib al-Haq and Kataeb Hizballah have mostly kept out of the fray. But militia commanders say they are prepared to act.

SLIDE INTO CONFLICT

Since April, bombings and attacks have targeted Shi’ite and Sunni mosques and neighborhoods in Baghdad and other cities, as well as security forces and even moderate Sunni leaders.

Many Iraqis, especially in Baghdad, fear a return of death squads, with shops closing early and extra security measures.

“Shi’ite militant groups have largely stayed out of recent violence. If they are behind bombings of Sunni mosques, that suggests that they are being drawn into conflict,” said Stephen Wicken, at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

“That would set the conditions up for a slide into broader sectarian conflict.”

Syria’s war, where mostly Sunni rebels are trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad, has further frayed ties between Iraq’s Shi’ites and Sunnis. Iraqi fighters from both sects are crossing the border to fight for opposite sides in Syria.

Iraqi Shi’ite officials fear an Sunni Islamist take-over in Syria if Assad, whose Alawite sect is rooted in Shi’ite Islam, falls. Such fears reflect a broader regional rivalry between Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran and Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia.

Maliki, a Shi’ite, has often upset his Sunni and ethnic Kurdish partners involved in a delicate power-sharing deal.

Soon after U.S. troops left, Iraqi authorities arrested the bodyguards of Maliki’s Sunni vice-president and a year later those of the Sunni finance minister. The arrests were officially linked to terrorism cases, but they aggravated Sunni fears.

Since December, thousands of Sunnis have protested against the government in Sunni-dominated provinces such as Anbar, but negotiations aimed at defusing the crisis have so far failed.

An Iraqi army raid on a Sunni protest camp in the town of Hawija in April reignited violence that killed more than 700 people in that month, by a U.N. count. That had been the highest monthly toll in almost five years until it was exceeded in May.

(Reporting by Patrick Markey; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

But such assurances do not impress anxious Baghdadis like Atheer, a delivery driver, who has started restricting his movements again for fear of sectarian death squads.

Fanned by the war in Syria, the surge in attacks has been blamed by government officials on Iraqi Sunni Muslim militants, some allied to Syria’s Islamist rebels.

“I’ve stopped going to some places, some Sunni areas, because I don’t feel safe there any more, because I’m a Shi’ite,” 21-year-old Atheer said, not wishing to use his full name. “Not since 2008 have we heard of things like this.”

At least 14 more people were killed early on Thursday in Baghdad, a day after bombings claimed nearly 30 more lives in the capital in the kind of violence that has blighted lives and left the economy of one of the world’s most oil-rich states in ruins.

Just since April, at least 1,100 people have died, more than 700 of them last month alone, according to the United Nations, making it the bloodiest month in nearly five years, let alone since U.S. troops ended an eight-year occupation in late 2011.

However, April’s slaughter was barely a quarter of the death toll at the peak of the killing in 2006 and 2007 when 3,000 or more were dying every month, and officials in the Shi’ite-led administration say the situation is still not as bad as before.

Pinning blame on militants among the Sunni minority who dominated Iraq before the U.S. invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, they say Shi’ite militias have yet to hit back as they did in 2006 – but warn that if they do, life could be grim indeed.

“For now, there is no sign suggesting the Shi’ite militias are responding,” one senior intelligence official told Reuters.

“But if these attacks increase, we could go back to 2006.”

A particular concern among Baghdad officials is the prospect of a Sunni Islamist state in Syria, where Iraqi fighters have engaged on both sides of a civil war that reflects a broader regional confrontation pitting Sunnis, and Sunni states like Saudi Arabia, against Shi’ites backed by non-Arab, Shi’ite Iran.

In Iraq, militants echo widespread Sunni discontent with the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi’ite many see as too close to Iran and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; their bombs and shootings have hit not just Iraqi troops and police, but Shi’ite mosques, cafes and markets, from north to south.

Maliki, who has struggled to keep Sunnis inside his power-sharing government, has pitted the security forces against Sunni militants; dozens of deaths last month after an army raid on a Sunni protest camp near Kirkuk sparked a new wave of violence.

SHI’ITE “RESTRAINT”

Government security officials say they do not believe major Shi’ite militias, notably the Mehdi Army, Asaib al-Haq and Kataeb Hizballah, are joining the fight inside Iraq, even if some are sending fighters to Syria to battle Sunni rebels there.

Yet Sunni targets in Iraq have also been bombed, including mosques, and Shi’ite militia leaders say they are preparing to fight. There are signs some of their units are flexing their muscles. Shi’ite militants, albeit unarmed, patrolled streets on Monday in one Baghdad district after a series of bombings there.

Many in Baghdad fear a resurgence of sectarian death squads.

And in a flashback to a time when such militias ruled parts of the capital, officials blamed Shi’ite gunmen this month for attacking liquor stores and for killing a group of prostitutes.

Yet security officials name their main adversaries as the Naqshbandi army, associated with Sunni officers once close to Saddam, and the Islamic State of Iraq, Iraq’s wing of al Qaeda.

The absence of U.S. troops has offered them more scope. There were up to 170,000 Americans in Iraq in 2007 during a “surge” to stifle civil war after the bombing of a major Shi’ite shrine in February 2006 had sparked retaliation by Shi’ite militias and a balkanisation of cities into sectarian zones.

While Maliki has an army and police force numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the U.S. departure has deprived them of much air support and intelligence capabilities. Benefiting from Sunni rebel-held territory across the Syrian border, and from deepening frustration with the government among the wider Iraqi Sunni population, the militants have shown their reach.

In the last few weeks, almost simultaneous bombings have hit northern towns like Kirkuk and Mosul and even the Shi’ite stronghold of Basra, the Gulf oil hub in the south.

Yet differences with the past may limit the instability.

For one, Sunni, Shi’ite and ethnic Kurdish and other communities are more separated, a result of the millions fleeing in previous years to more homogeneous towns and neighbourhoods.

And while Sunnis remain as divided among militants and moderates as before, Shi’ites – perhaps 60 percent of the 36 million Iraqis, now have a more united leadership around Maliki, in control of a better armed military and less likely to turn to the chaotic militia bands who fought the last time around.

“We’ve moved away from the dynamics of the past, which supported a more devastating civil war, to one of on-and-off clashes between the Shi’ite government forces and the Sunni periphery,” said Ramzy Mardini, at the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies in Beirut.

KIDNAP FEARS

Further ahead, however, much depends on Syria. Signalling their regional intent, al Qaeda in Iraq earlier this year proclaimed an alliance with Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra.

Should Assad fall, Shi’ite Iraqi officials fear the rise of a hostile, hardline Sunni government. Their nightmare scenario is Sunni Islamist guerrillas flooding back across the border.

Those regional concerns mean little to Iraqis faced by daily violence. Aside from the bombings, particular fear is spread by talk, especially among Sunnis in Baghdad, of a return of death squads and kidnap gangs operating under cover official uniforms.

One man, who insisted on anonymity out of fear of reprisals, said his brother, a 24-year-old Baghdad Sunni called Nassir, was killed this week after what a work colleague told the family was a kidnap by Shi’ite gunmen in Baghdad. “There was a false checkpoint and he was taken there,” the man said. The next the family knew of Nassir, they had a call to check the morgue.

A senior police official denied this week that sectarian militias were setting up fake checkpoints to snatch victims from rival communities – the rumour he put down to legitimate police units working in plain clothes. But many in the capital are not reassured and shops have begun shutting up early in some areas close to religious fault-lines as staff hurry home before dark.

“If we go back to that time, life will come to a halt,” said Umm Ali, a housewife living in a Baghdad neighbourhood that is still home to both Shi’ites and Sunnis.

“We won’t be able to do anything.”

(editing by Alastair Macdonald)

On Tuesday, troops stormed a camp where Sunni Muslims have protested for months against what they see as their marginalization under the Shi’ite-led government, a raid that prompted hardline Sunni tribal leaders to call for revolt.

More than 50 people were killed in ensuing clashes, which spread beyond the town of Hawija near Kirkuk, 170 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, to other areas, reviving worries of a return to widespread intercommunal violence.

Sporadic battles continued on Wednesday and hardline tribal leaders warned that protests could turn into open rebellion.

Militants briefly took over a police station and an army base and burned a small Shi’ite mosque in Sulaiman Pek, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, before army helicopters drove gunmen out of the town.

At least 18 were killed, including 10 gunmen and five soldiers, officials said.

An ambush on an army convoy near Tikrit with roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades killed three more soldiers.

A surge in Sunni militant unrest has accompanied growing turmoil among the Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish parties that make up Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s power-sharing government.

A decade after the U.S.-led invasion, sectarian wounds are still raw in Iraq, where just a few a years ago violence between Shi’ite militias and Sunni Islamist insurgents killed tens of thousands of people.

Iraq last descended into widespread sectarian bloodshed in 2006-2007 after al Qaeda bombed the Shi’ite Askari shrine in Samarra, triggering a cycle of retaliation.

Thousands of Sunnis have been protesting since December, venting frustrations building up since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the empowerment of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority through the ballot box.

“We are staying restrained so far, but if government forces keep targeting us, no one can know what will happen in the future, and things could spin out of control,” said Abdul Aziz al-Faris, a tribal leader in Hawija.

The two main Shi’ite militias, Asaib al-Haq and Kataeb Hizbullah, appear to have stayed out of the latest violence. But former fighters said they could take up arms again if needed.

Maliki has set up a committee headed by a senior Sunni leader to investigate the violence at the Hawija camp, which left 23 people dead. He has promised to punish any excessive use of force and provide for victims’ families.

The prime minister has offered some concessions to Sunni protesters, including proposed reforms to tough anti-terrorism laws, but most Sunni leaders say they will not be enough to appease the demonstrators.

The Shi’ite premier may also seek to consolidate his position before 2014 parliamentary elections by taking a tough stance against hardline Sunni Islamists.

That may be a risk which could further alienate Sunnis.

“What we are now likely to see in western Iraq is a deteriorating cycle of confrontation between the central government and protesters that will benefit extremist groups,” said Crispin Hawes at Eurasia Group.

Iraq’s Sunni community is deeply divided between moderates more keen to work within Maliki’s government and those who see resistance as the only way to confront Baghdad.

“The Maliki government’s aggression against our people in Hawija has forced us to take our uprising on another course,” said Sheikh Qusai al-Zain, a protest leader in Anbar province.

“We call upon all tribes and armed groups to begin supporting our brothers in Hawija.”

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad,; Gazwan Hassan in Samarra and Mustafa Mohammed in Kirkuk; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Two mortar rounds injured three voters and a policeman at a
school used as a voting centre in Latifiya, south of Baghdad,
soon after the start of the ballot that will measure parties’
political strength before parliamentary elections in 2014.

Attacks have surged since the start of the year with a local
al-Qaeda wing and Sunni Islamists stepping up their campaign to
undermine the Shi’ite-led government and stoke confrontation
among the country’s combustible sectarian and ethnic mix.

Small bombs exploded in Tuz Khurmato, Tikrit and Samarra in
the north and six more mortar rounds landed in a town near the
southern city of Hilla, without causing any injuries, said
police.

Iraqi politics is deeply split along sectarian lines with
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government mired in crisis over
how to share power between majority Shi’ite Muslims, Sunnis and
Kurds who run their own autonomous enclave.

For Maliki, a strong showing by his Shi’ite State of Law
alliance may open the way for a shot at a third term in 2014
elections when he has hinted at plans to abandon Iraq’s unwieldy
power-sharing deal to form a majority government.

Sunni rivals, deeply divided over how to work with his
government, and the premier’s Shi’ite rivals, anti-U.S. cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr and the ISCI movement, will look to chip away at
Maliki’s sway over provincial councils.

Security was tight across Iraq with more than 8,000 hopefuls
running for nearly 450 seats on provincial councils which select
local governors. More than a dozen candidates, mostly Sunnis,
were killed during campaigning.

Early turnout at polling stations in Baghdad, and cities
like Basra, Tikrit and Baquba appeared light, according to
Reuters reporters.

Many Iraqis are frustrated with insecurity, unemployment,
rife corruption and the lack of basic services a decade after
the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein and helped trigger
sectarian bloodshed that killed tens of thousands in 2006-2007.

Attacks on a Sunni and a Shi’ite mosque on Friday killed at
least eight. A suicide bomber killed 32 people in a blast at a
popular cafe in a mostly Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad a day
before.

Since American troops left in December 2011, Iraqi politics
has been paralyzed by infighting over power-sharing agreements
with Maliki’s rivals accusing the Shi’ite premier of
consolidating power at the expense of Sunni and Kurdish
partners.

“I took part in past elections, but all those we elected
did nothing for the people,” said Ali Hussein Sharqi, voting in
the southern oil hub of Basra. “We want people who will offer
jobs to the jobless.”

SUNNI DISCONTENT

Three provinces in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, run
by ethnic Kurds since 1991, and the ethnically mixed, disputed
city of Kirkuk, will not be voting on Saturday.

Washington weighed into the election process, asking the
government not to alienate Sunni voters after the Cabinet
postponed voting in two mostly Sunni provinces because local
officials warned they could not provide security there.

Since December, tens of thousands of Sunni Muslim protesters
have taken to the streets each week to demonstrate against what
they say is the marginalisation of their minority sect.

Election authorities say suspended voting in Anbar and
Nineweh provinces may go ahead in a month.

But ten years after the invasion, many Iraqi Sunnis feel
they have been sidelined by the country’s majority Shi’ite
leadership and discriminated against by Iraqi security forces
and tough anti-terrorism laws.

“Suspending elections was the coup de grace for the
demonstrations. We’ve as lost everything,” said Maitham Jalal, a
college student in Anbar province. “Elections are a legitimate
right which was taken away by the government without any fear.”

Sunni-backed Iraqiya block has struggled to stay united with
its leadership split over how to manage relations with Maliki.
Those divisions are likely to play out in the provincial
election results.

“Overall the elections are likely to see Iraq stumble
further along the trajectory on which is has already been headed
for some time: to stratified, sectarian politics,” Eurasia Group
analyst Crispin Hawes wrote in a report.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Raheem Salman in
Baghdad; Aref Mohammed in Basra; Editing by Stacey Joyce and
Andrew Heavens)

Troops also fired on Sunni Muslim protesters in Kirkuk in clashes that killed at least two people during a rally against Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Saturday’s ballot will test Iraq’s political stability, with Maliki’s fragile government already caught up in a crisis over power-sharing among Shi’ite, Sunni and ethnic Kurds more than a year after the last U.S. troops left.

Bombings and suicide attacks have surged since the start of the year, with a local al Qaeda wing stepping up its campaign to try to trigger large-scale confrontation among Iraq’s mix of Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims and Kurds.

The vote will measure the political muscle of Maliki’s Shi’ite coalition and his Sunni rivals who are jockeying for position before the 2014 parliamentary vote where the prime minister may seek a third term.

More than a dozen candidates have been killed during the campaign, and voting has been suspended in two mainly Sunni provinces because officials said they could not guarantee security.

In the worst attack on Friday, police said several mortar rounds landed outside a Sunni Muslim mosque in a village near Khalis town during prayers, killing seven people and wounding a dozen more, police said.

A bomb placed inside a Shi’ite mosque in Kirkuk, 170 km (100 miles) north of the capital, also killed one and wounded 12 more just as worshippers were leaving, officials said.

“It appears the bomb was hidden there before prayer time and when the worshippers were leaving, it exploded,” said sheikh Raad al-Sakhri, the preacher of mosque and a representative of anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

A day earlier, a suicide bomber blew himself up on Thursday evening inside a Baghdad cafe in a mainly Sunni neighborhood, killing a least 32 and wounding dozens more in one of the worst single attacks in the Iraqi capital this year.

SUNNI DISCONTENT

Iraqi troops clashed with Sunni protesters in Kirkuk after demonstrators approached a checkpoint following Friday prayers, protest leaders and security officials said.

Security officials said troops were attacked by protesters. But protest leaders dismissed reports they were armed, blaming soldiers for the death of a protester and a soldier.

“One demonstrator was killed and three wounded and one soldier killed and three wounded in exchange of fire between some worshippers and some security elements in a checkpoint close to their mosque,” a senior security official said.

Since U.S. troops left in December 2011, Maliki’s Sunni and Kurdish partners have accused him of reneging on power-sharing agreements and consolidating his authority at their expense.

Thousands of Sunni protesters have taken to the streets in western provinces since December to demand reforms to address the discrimination they say their sect faces from the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.

Many Sunnis feel they have been sidelined by the country’s Shi’ite leadership since the fall of Saddam Hussein after the 2003 invasion. Others say they have been unfairly targeted for arrest by security forces under tough anti-terrorism laws.

Voting in Anbar and Nineweh provinces has been suspended for as long as six months because local officials said they were unable to guarantee security there. But election authorities have suggested that voting may go ahead in a month’s time.

Washington has urged the government to reconsider the decision and Iraqi Sunni leaders have warned that suspending elections may help push protesters into the hands of hardline Sunni Islamists.

Al Qaeda is already regaining ground in Iraq, especially in the western desert near Syria’s border, where it has benefited from the flow of Sunni fighters opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It is also seeking to tap into Iraqi Sunni discontent.

(Reporting by Raheem Kareem, a Reuters reporter in Diyala and Mustafa Mahmoud; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Alison Williams)

Violence has surged since the start of the year with al
Qaeda’s local wing gaining from the Syrian conflict next door,
and feeding off Sunni Muslim discontent in western provinces
along the Syrian border.

To the north, Exxon Mobil is caught in a dispute
between Baghdad’s Arab-led central government and ethnic
Kurd-run Kurdistan enclave over which controls oil and land.

POLITICAL CRISIS

Maliki is locked in a crisis with Sunni and Kurdish partners
in the power-sharing government. Critics accuse the prime
minister of consolidating power and refusing to live up to
agreements. Political turmoil is likely to drag on until
parliamentary elections in 2014.

Local elections in April will give some indication of the
fortunes of Maliki and rivals. Voting has been postponed in two
Sunni-dominated provinces because of threats to electoral
workers and violence. Sunni protesters, who feel marginalised,
have been protesting since December in western provinces.

What to watch:

- Major shifts in Kurdish, Shi’ite blocks against Maliki.

- Outcome of April provincial vote.

- Deals to unblock passage of laws.

- Violence during Sunni protests.

SYRIA SPILLOVER

For Iraq’s Shi’ite leadership, the Sunni rebellion against
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a political nightmare. They
fear if Assad falls, it may bring to power a hardline Sunni
regime hostile to Baghdad and lead to Sunni Islamist fighters
crossing the border to carry out attacks in Iraq.

Iraq’s leadership is close to Assad’s Shi’ite ally Iran, and
says it takes no sides. But Maliki has come under pressure from
Washington to prevent Iran flying arms to Assad through Iraqi
airspace. Washington is Iraq’s largest arms supplier.

What to watch:

- Any shift in Baghdad’s position on Assad.

- Frontier clashes destabilising border areas.

- U.S. Congress pressuring Iraq through arms deals.

INSURGENT VIOLENCE

Violence has surged this year, especially suicide bombings,
as insurgents tied to al Qaeda have hit Shi’ite targets to try
to stoke sectarian tensions. So far Shi’ite militias have stayed
out of the fray but attacks on Shi’ite holy sites could draw
them in as it did during the sectarian bloodshed of 2006-2007.

Al Qaeda’s local wing, Islamic State of Iraq, says it has
joined forces with the al-Nusra Front in Syria to forge one
theatre of war. Security forces say insurgents are using the
remote western desert in Anbar province bordering Syria to
regroup, recruit and train.

What to watch:

- Militia retaliation after an attack on Shi’ite sites.

- Signs of al Qaeda openly controlling border areas.

- Attacks against government offices in Baghdad.

KURDISTAN DISPUTE AND OIL

Tensions between Baghdad’s central government and the
autonomous Kurdistan region are at their worst in years. While
Baghdad says it has control over the country’s oil resources,
Kurdistan says it has the right to sign oil deals and develop
its fields. Both governments sent troops to reinforce their
internal border, a potential flashpoint.

At the heart of the dispute is Exxon Mobil, which has signed
deals with Kurdistan, but also operates the huge West Qurna
oilfield in the south. Baghdad says the U.S. major must chose
between the south or Kurdistan. Turkey also wants access to
Kurdistan’s oil and gas, but also risks its investments in the
south if it moves ahead too quickly and angers Baghdad.

- Concrete moves by Kurdistan, Turkey for a pipeline deal.

- Decisions by Exxon on its southern assets.

- Build-up of troops along the internal border.

(Editing by Pravin Char)

Yet rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan, who declared a ceasefire from his Turkish prison cell last week, may not find it easy to coax his fighters down as part of any deal to end a conflict that has taken over 40,000 lives.

“There are mixed feelings,” said Ocalan’s military commander, Murat Karayilan, in a hamlet below the Qandil range. “Hundreds of my comrades lost their lives at my side.

“I have to tell you, our comrades want to continue this struggle. The organization has decided on peace, but the middle level fighters are saying we can continue our war,” he told Reuters. “I am working with them so they accept this as well.”

The mustachioed image of Ocalan hewn into the mountainside across the valley serves as a reminder of who leads the PKK, even 14 years after his capture by Turkish special forces in Kenya. But Ocalan himself told Kurdish politicians recently he was frustrated by skepticism in Qandil about the peace process.

“I’m angry with them,” he said.

The force is small but dogged, some 3-4,000 in Iraq and 1,500-2,000 in Turkey, where they have targeted Turkish troops as well as bombing cities including Istanbul and beach resorts.

Ocalan’s authority as founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), could evaporate if mail communication with Qandil breaks down over the 1,400 Km (900 miles) separating Qandil and Imrali island. He narrowly escaped the gallows after a 1999 trial, but may yet be dispatched to political oblivion.

HAZARDOUS JOURNEY

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan risks the wrath of nationalists who fear any deal granting Kurdish demands for autonomy and broader cultural freedom would quickly relaunch a drive for full Kurdish independence. Moreover, in talking with the PKK, he treats with a grouping designated terrorists by the European Union and the United States besides Ankara.

Erdogan says forces will continue operations against the PKK as long as they do not lay down arms, but he has given assurances rebels would not be targeted as they left Turkey. Karayilan, however, wants guarantees on this from parliament.

Guerrillas said Turkish jets flew over the mountains on Monday, and PKK fighters retaliated against helicopters approaching the border on Wednesday.

“We are ready for war, but we are ready for peace, too,” Karayilan said in a small room decorated with Ocalan posters. “If there are any attacks against our forces they have the right to defend themselves.”

Karayilan, sporting a bushy grey moustache like Ocalan and dressed in olive green Kurdish baggy trousers and tunic, said fighters could withdraw to Qandil by autumn, with safe passage. It is however a long journey, and in the past a hazardous one.

The mountain road snaking into PKK-held territory is dotted with wreckage. A shrine holds portraits and scraps from what is described as a family car caught in a Turkish air strike. In one village, a collapsed concrete building marks where more Turkish bombs fell in retaliation for PKK attacks inside Turkey.

Below the peaks, PKK fighters brandishing Kalashnikovs wave trucks and cars through remote checkpoints that demarcate Iraqi Kurdistan from rebel-controlled land. The co-existence between the PKK enclave and the Kurdistan government, which is cultivating good relations with Ankara, is an uneasy one.

LEAVING THE MOUNTAIN

A woman who gave the nom de guerre Hevin Ciye, said she left Qandil after being imprisoned by the PKK for a month over a dispute with a superior who had refused to allow the women to wear shorts in a volleyball match. The scars of three bullet wounds on her left arm are a permanent reminder of more profound ordeals during her nine-year stay in the mountains.

“It was harder than words can describe,” she told Reuters in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Arbil, where she now runs fast-food concession stands in several shopping malls. “When we left the camp (during bombing), we moved almost every night and used the rucksacks in which we carried our ammunition as pillows.”

In sorties across the border into Turkey, they ate wheat mixed with water or boiled leaves and grass, bedding down in caves or under trees to evade Turkish forces.

Karayilan said talk of PKK rebels handing over their arms was still premature, before constitutional reforms to address their demands for Kurdish rights and recognition. But behind the scenes talks advance tentatively and, according to media leaks, have produced the outline of a plan.

“More than a concrete agreement, there is a mutual understanding now,” said Karayilan, who was born in the same southeastern Turkish province as Ocalan, said. “There are a lot of risks in the process, but it is the right step to take.”

After opening its military campaign in 1984 to demand an independent Kurdish state in the south, the PKK has moderated its demands to political autonomy and broader cultural rights in a country where the Kurdish language was long formally banned.

Many fighters are from southeastern Turkey, the Kurdish heartland where many say they faced discrimination and oppression. Erdogan took a political risk in easing restrictions on the Kurdish language and culture, winning the opprobrium of nationalists who fear a disintegration of Turkey.

CAVES AND HUTS

Life is far from idyllic, fighters moving regularly to evade air raids, sleeping in caves, in stone huts, in the woods or under canvas. Meals are largely beans, rice and meat.

The PKK promotes women’s equality to recruit in traditionally male-dominated Kurdish society and female fighters in combat fatigues are much in evidence in the stronghold.

One woman guerrilla, who said she’d joined PKK ranks at 13 and spent 15 years in Qandil, knows freedoms and status she enjoys here may sit ill with a traditional Kurdish home where women are often more confined to kitchen and children.

“In our society, women are not valued. I feel my place and my value more here.”

Another female fighter also had reservations about leaving the mountain after so long, and returning home.

“We cannot really leave this life,” she said, sitting with a rifle in her lap. “I say to myself sometimes, if I return to live with my family, and peace and freedom is achieved, how will I leave behind the life I have gotten used to?”

There perhaps lies one of the problems – not unfamiliar to those seeking to end an insurgency. The guerrilla existence, the mountain, becomes a way of life.

“Neither female nor male fighters want to leave the free life they have in the mountains,” Karayilan said. “But we have to make them believe.”

The questions of disarmament and reintegration of combatants have tested peace efforts from Northern Ireland to South Africa.

Foreign mediators could be brought in to oversee disarmament and reintegration, as happened in Northern Ireland. Certainly, there is a strong element of distrust on both sides.

For PKK fighters like Botan, eight years fighting in Qandil and Turkey have shaken any belief Ankara would play its part.

“History shows me there is no room to trust the Turkish state,” the former construction worker said.

The drive for peace on both sides followed from a summer when PKK attacks reached new heights and the Turkish authorities responded by arresting hundreds of Kurdish activists and renewing bombing raids on Qandil.

Truces have been declared and secret talks held with the PKK in the past, but there is a weariness on both sides with generations of young men, mostly Kurds, dying in the conflict. It is a conflict that has battered the Turkish economy and pitched the southeast into poverty.

“We are at a stage where the Kurdish and Turkish public want peace,” Karayilan said. “Erdogan has to take steps to solve the Kurdish issue and put his name down in history.”

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Yet rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan, who declared a ceasefire
from his Turkish prison cell last week, may not find it easy to
coax his fighters down as part of any deal to end a conflict
that has taken over 40,000 lives.

“There are mixed feelings,” said Ocalan’s military commander,
Murat Karayilan, in a hamlet below the Qandil range. “Hundreds
of my comrades lost their lives at my side.

“I have to tell you, our comrades want to continue this
struggle. The organisation has decided on peace, but the middle
level fighters are saying we can continue our war,” he told
Reuters. “I am working with them so they accept this as well.”

The moustachioed image of Ocalan hewn into the mountainside
across the valley serves as a reminder of who leads the PKK,
even 14 years after his capture by Turkish special forces in
Kenya. But Ocalan himself told Kurdish politicians recently he
was frustrated by scepticism in Qandil about the peace process.

“I’m angry with them,” he said.

The force is small but dogged, some 3-4,000 in Iraq and
1,500-2,000 in Turkey, where they have targeted Turkish troops
as well as bombing cities including Istanbul and beach resorts.

Ocalan’s authority as founder of the Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK), could evaporate if mail communication with Qandil
breaks down over the 1,400 Km (900 miles) separating Qandil and
Imrali island. He narrowly escaped the gallows after a 1999
trial, but may yet be dispatched to political oblivion.

HAZARDOUS JOURNEY

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan risks the wrath of
nationalists who fear any deal granting Kurdish demands for
autonomy and broader cultural freedom would quickly relaunch a
drive for full Kurdish independence. Moreover, in talking with
the PKK, he treats with a grouping designated terrorists by the
European Union and the United States besides Ankara.

Erdogan says forces will continue operations against the PKK
as long as they do not lay down arms, but he has given
assurances rebels would not be targeted as they left Turkey.
Karayilan, however, wants guarantees on this from parliament.

Guerrillas said Turkish jets flew over the mountains on
Monday, and PKK fighters retaliated against helicopters
approaching the border on Wednesday.

“We are ready for war, but we are ready for peace, too,”
Karayilan said in a small room decorated with Ocalan posters.
“If there are any attacks against our forces they have the right
to defend themselves.”

Karayilan, sporting a bushy grey moustache like Ocalan and
dressed in olive green Kurdish baggy trousers and tunic, said
fighters could withdraw to Qandil by autumn, with safe passage.
It is however a long journey, and in the past a hazardous one.

The mountain road snaking into PKK-held territory is dotted
with wreckage. A shrine holds portraits and scraps from what is
described as a family car caught in a Turkish air strike. In one
village, a collapsed concrete building marks where more Turkish
bombs fell in retaliation for PKK attacks inside Turkey.

Below the peaks, PKK fighters brandishing Kalashnikovs wave
trucks and cars through remote checkpoints that demarcate Iraqi
Kurdistan from rebel-controlled land. The co-existence between
the PKK enclave and the Kurdistan government, which is
cultivating good relations with Ankara, is an uneasy one.

LEAVING THE MOUNTAIN

A woman who gave the nom de guerre Hevin Ciye, said she left
Qandil after being imprisoned by the PKK for a month over a
dispute with a superior who had refused to allow the women to
wear shorts in a volleyball match. The scars of three bullet
wounds on her left arm are a permanent reminder of more profound
ordeals during her nine-year stay in the mountains.

“It was harder than words can describe,” she told Reuters in
the Iraqi Kurdish capital Arbil, where she now runs fast-food
concession stands in several shopping malls. “When we left the
camp (during bombing), we moved almost every night and used the
rucksacks in which we carried our ammunition as pillows.”

In sorties across the border into Turkey, they ate wheat
mixed with water or boiled leaves and grass, bedding down in
caves or under trees to evade Turkish forces.

Karayilan said talk of PKK rebels handing over their arms
was still premature, before constitutional reforms to address
their demands for Kurdish rights and recognition. But behind the
scenes talks advance tentatively and, according to media leaks,
have produced the outline of a plan.

“More than a concrete agreement, there is a mutual
understanding now,” said Karayilan, who was born in the same
southeastern Turkish province as Ocalan, said. “There are a lot
of risks in the process, but it is the right step to take.”

After opening its military campaign in 1984 to demand an
independent Kurdish state in the south, the PKK has moderated
its demands to political autonomy and broader cultural rights in
a country where the Kurdish language was long formally banned.

Many fighters are from southeastern Turkey, the Kurdish
heartland where many say they faced discrimination and
oppression. Erdogan took a political risk in easing restrictions
on the Kurdish language and culture, winning the opprobrium of
nationalists who fear a disintegration of Turkey.

CAVES AND HUTS

Life is far from idyllic, fighters moving regularly to evade
air raids, sleeping in caves, in stone huts, in the woods or
under canvas. Meals are largely beans, rice ansd meat.

The PKK promotes women’s equality to recruit in
traditionally male-dominated Kurdish society and female fighters
in combat fatigues are much in evidence in the stronghold.

One woman guerrilla, who said she’d joined PKK ranks at 13
and spent 15 years in Qandil, knows freedoms and status she
enjoys here may sit ill with a traditional Kurdish home where
women are often more confined to kitchen and children.

“In our society, women are not valued. I feel my place and
my value more here.”

Another female fighter also had reservations about leaving
the mountain after so long, and returning home.

“We cannot really leave this life,” she said, sitting with a
rifle in her lap. “I say to myself sometimes, if I return to
live with my family, and peace and freedom is achieved, how will
I leave behind the life I have gotten used to?”

There perhaps lies one of the problems – not unfamiliar to
those seeking to end an insurgency. The guerrilla existence, the
mountain, becomes a way of life.

“Neither female nor male fighters want to leave the free
life they have in the mountains,” Karayilan said. “But we have
to make them believe.”

The questions of disarmament and reintegration of combatants
have tested peace efforts from Northern Ireland to South Africa.

Foreign mediatiors could be brought in to oversee
disarmament and reintegration, as happened in Northern Ireland.
Certainly, there is a strong element of distrust on both sides.

For PKK fighters like Botan, eight years fighting in Qandil
and Turkey have shaken any belief Ankara would play its part.

“History shows me there is no room to trust the Turkish
state,” the former construction worker said.

The drive for peace on both sides followed from a summer
when PKK attacks reached new heights and the Turkish authorities
responded by arresting hundreds of Kurdish activists and
renewing bombing raids on Qandil.

Truces have been declared and secret talks held with the PKK
in the past, but there is a weariness on both sides with
generations of young men, mostly Kurds, dying in the conflict.
It is a conflict that has battered the Turkish economy and
pitched the southeast into poverty.

“We are at a stage where the Kurdish and Turkish public
want peace,” Karayilan said. “Erdogan has to take steps to solve
the Kurdish issue and put his name down in history.”

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)