Baghdad: Iraq on Monday marked the third anniversary of the US-led invasion amid deadlock over the formation of a national government, rampant lawlessness and increasing threats of all-out civil war.
As the conflict entered its fourth year, four guards tasked with protecting infrastructure were killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad and nine corpses were discovered in and around the capital in what has become a daily ritual in the last three weeks.
US and Iraqi forces have mobilized to avert a possible Sunni extremist attack that could trigger a new round of communal violence as hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims descended on the shrine city of Karbala for a major ceremony coinciding with the anniversary.
Shiite pilgrims walking south to Karbala have been repeatedly shot at over the past week, with almost a dozen killed and scores wounded, including five injured on Monday.
Rampant sectarian violence between majority Shiites and the historically dominant Sunni Arabs flared after the February 22 bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra, leaving hundreds of people dead.
On March 12, a wave of car bombs exploding in Baghdad's impoverished Shiite suburb of Sadr City sparked new waves of revenge killings against Sunnis.
In three years, the Iraq war has metamorphosed from a battle between US troops and Sunni insurgents angered by ex-president Saddam Hussein's ouster, to internecine struggle among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
Foreign fighters like al-Qaeda militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have also fanned the flames with spectacular attacks meant to trigger a civil war.
At least 33,000 Iraqis have died in the violence since US-led forces starting bombing Baghdad on March 20, 2003, according to the Internet site Iraq Body Count which tracks Iraqi casualties.
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