Iraqi violence: The nightmare returns AFTER a lull of five years during which it seemed that Iraq might emerge from its civil war, the country has been drawn back into a nightmare of spiralling attacks on a widening range of targets. The past four months have been among the bloodiest since 2008; nearly 3,000 people have been killed and over 7,000 injured. The Islamic State of Iraq, the latest incarnation of al-Qaeda, appears to have broadened its scope from attacks on security forces and Shia mosques and markets to suicide-bombings of cafés and funeral gatherings. More such attacks are likely following the freeing of hundreds of extremists during twin prison-breaks on July 22nd. In the northern provinces of Diyala, Kirkuk and Nineveh and in Anbar province in the west, a resurgent al-Qaeda, newer Sunni extremist groups and re-emerging Shia militias are vying for control. Iraqi security officials say they have captured or killed more than 70% of al-Qaeda's people in Baghdad and that successful attacks on police stations and government ministries have declined. But outside the capital the threat is mounting. Al-Qaeda has regrouped in the surrounding tribal areas, which have often been used as staging posts for attacks on Baghdad. Frequent strikes on police patrols and army checkpoints, as well as daily assassinations of officers and interior-ministry people, have kept security forces on the defensive. The UN's secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has warned of an "alarming" renewal of violence as a result of Iraq's continuing political stalemate and the conflict next door in Syria. "The battlefields [of Iraq and Syria] are merging," Martin Kobler, the UN's outgoing envoy to Iraq, told the Security Council on July 16th. Indeed, the Iraqi government is so concerned about Sunni fighters coming over from Syria that it is physically separating itself from its war-torn neighbour by digging deeper trenches and higher berms along the border.