By Tim Arango, New York Times, June 13/14, 2012

BAGHDAD — In the deadliest day in Iraq since the withdrawal of the United States military in December, a series of explosions that mostly targeted Shiite Muslims amounted to an emphatic demonstration of the still potent capabilities of the Sunni insurgency and a reminder of the instability left behind by American forces.

Shortly after midnight Wednesday, a homemade bomb exploded here in the capital, a harbinger of what was to come. Around 5 a.m., a truck bomb exploded in Khadamiya, a Baghdad neighborhood where Shiite pilgrims had begun to gather to commemorate the life and death of a revered imam who was the Prophet Muhammad’s great-grandson. From then on, reports of other attacks flooded in from around the country — Samarra, Kirkuk, Mosul, Falluja, Ramadi, Hilla — and by midday officials said more than 70 people were dead and at least 260 people wounded. The only large cities spared were the southern port city of Basra and the holy city of Najaf [....]