Car bombs killed at least 30 people across Iraq and injured 123 more.  The attacks are part of the growing Shi’a versus Sunni violence that spilling over the porous border with Syria, where the civil war has been degenerating into a sectarian conflict.

The deadliest attack took place in Baghdad’s predominantly Shi’a district of Bayaa, where a bomb in a parked vehicle exploded near car workshops killing seven people and injuring more than a dozen.  Another attack on another car workshop in a Sunni district 20 kilometers north of Baghdad killed three and injured 10 after nightfall. 

Violence in Iraq is at the highest level in at least five years.  Both sides target rival areas of Baghdad almost daily.  And the United Nations says more than 8,000 people have been killed this year.

It mirrors the back and forth fighting in Syria, where foreign fighters have dislodged government forces from a town near Aleppo in the north.  The rebels are generally Sunni and many are aligned with al Qaeda.  President Bashar al-Assad belongs to a Shi’a sect. 

Assad’s forces made on significant gain – The pro-government troops secured a key highway Sunday that links Damascus with the ports of northern Syria.  It paves the way for the possible shipment of Syria’s chemical weapons overland to a Mediterranean port for destruction abroad, in accordance with the deal to remove these weapons from Syria’s arsenal.