Bloomberg — Bombings across Iraq killed at least 33 people and wounded about 49 yesterday as US and Iraqi forces defended the construction of a security wall around a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad.The worst attack took place near the northern city of Mosul, where a car bomb left 10 people dead and 20 injured near the office of the Kurdish Democratic Party, state television reported. In the eastern city of Baquba, a car bomb killed four police officers and wounded 20, state television said.

A suicide bomber killed three people outside a restaurant in Baghdad’s Karradet Mariam neighborhood, near the fortified Green Zone that houses government buildings and foreign embassies. The blast was followed by a car bombing that killed a civilian and wounded four others close to the Iranian Embassy, which is also near the Green Zone, state television said.

At least two car bombs killed 15 people and wounded five others in the western city of Ramadi, state television reported.

US and Iraqi forces began a security crackdown in Baghdad and the western province of al-Anbar in February to quell sectarian attacks between rival Sunni and Shiite Muslim factions.

The US military may reconsider the use of walls around volatile Baghdad neighbourhoods as part of the crackdown after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki criticised the erection of a barrier around a Sunni enclave in mainly Shiite eastern Baghdad.

Al-Maliki said yesterday he was “opposed” to the building of a concrete wall around the Adhamiyah district, and that “its construction is going to stop.” He made the comments at a Cairo news conference aired by Al Jazeera television.

US forces began construction of the wall on April 10. It is aimed at protecting the Sunnis from Shiite death squads and preventing Sunni groups from attacking Shiite areas.

“We are dealing with increased effort on behalf of terrorists to use car bombs,” a U.S. military spokesman, Rear Admiral Mark Fox, said today at a televised news conference. “We need to take appropriate measures to restrict that action.”

The “temporary shields” are “movable and we will be able to employ them as necessary,” Fox said. “We are working very closely with the government of Iraq on that.”

Iraqi security forces spokesman Brigadier Qasim Ata said construction of the security barrier in Adhamiyah will continue.

“The main goal is to provide protection and security in the Adhamiyah neighbourhood,” Ata said at the joint briefing with Fox. The barrier will be moved “to another neighbourhood once security is restored in Adhamiyah, he said.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, said the US will “respect the will” of the Iraqi government on the issue. The wall is not intended “to segregate communities nor to engage in a form of political or social engineering,” he said in his first speech in the post televised from Baghdad.