Large Medium Small |
BAGHDAD: Massive bombings and scattered daily violence won't impede American troops from leaving Iraq by the end of 2011, the country's prime minister said Wednesday.
Nouri al-Maliki blamed explosions in two major Iraqi cities a day earlier on al-Qaida extremists and former Baath Party loyalists. He said both groups, whom he blamed for three massive bombings since August, seek to derail Iraq's fragile political process.
But the December 31, 2011 deadline for the U.S. military withdrawal, he said, remains "in a final form, with fixed timetables."
"It is something we underscore many times, and with the U.S. side as well," al-Maliki said in an hourlong news conference in central Baghdad's Green Zone. "So the withdrawal will not be affected."
Tuesday's bombings killed nine people and wounded scores in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul. They happened exactly a week after a series of suicide bombers in Baghdad killed 127 and injured more than 500.
Massive bombings in August and October, also in Baghdad, together killed 250. Nearly all the attacks in the capital targeted government buildings.
Al-Maliki said the attackers were seeking to scuttle Iraq's March 7 national elections.