SAMARRA, Iraq, Dec 23, (Agencies):  Several thousand Iraqis in Sunni Muslim strongholds protested on Friday against Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, responding to his moves against two Sunni leaders and taking to the streets a day after fatal bombings hit the capital Baghdad.
Maliki this week sought Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi’s arrest on terrorism charges and moved to fire a Sunni deputy, and on Thursday at least 72 people were killed in Baghdad by bombings in mainly Shi’ite neighborhoods.
The events threaten to splinter Iraq’s fragile sectarian and ethnic faultlines and highlight the risk of the country tumbling into the kind of bloody slaughter that a few years ago led the OPEC oil-producer to the edge of civil war.
After Friday prayers, with Sunni imams warning Maliki was seeking to foment sectarian divisions, protesters were on the streets of Sunni-dominated Samarra, Ramadi, Baiji and Qaim, many waving banners in support of Hashemi, and criticising the government.
The crisis could scuttle a delicate power-sharing agreement that splits posts among Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders just days after the last American troops withdrew nearly nine years after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.
“The charges against Hashemi were orchestrated behind closed doors. Maliki is trying to remove Sunnis from power to get a tight grip, like as a new dictator of Iraq,” said Ahmed al-Abbasi, a protester from Samarra.
An emergency session in parliament among leaders of political blocs to debate the crisis was cancelled on Friday.
For many Sunnis who feel marginalised by the rise of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority since the fall of Saddam, Maliki’s measures have deepened worries the Shi’ite leader is making a power grab to consolidate Shi’ite power.
“Hashemi, fear not, with our blood we support you,” one banner read in Samarra.
Hashemi denies charges his office ran an assassination squad. After the interior ministry broadcast what it said were confessions from Hashemi’s bodyguards, the Sunni leader left for semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, where he is unlikely to be handed over to central government authorities.
Planned crisis talks set for Friday between Iraqi political leaders after deadly attacks in Baghdad were cancelled, an official said, after the two main parliamentary blocs refused to meet.
The meeting had been called in an effort to resolve a worsening political row between the Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s National Alliance and the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, the latter of which is boycotting the cabinet and parliament.
“Yesterday, the National Alliance said Iraqiya should first end its boycott of parliament and the cabinet, and then there will be a meeting of the political blocs,” a parliament official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“If the National Alliance does not attend the session, there is no need for it, because the crisis is between them and Iraqiya.”
Authorities have issued a warrant for the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges he ran a death squad, and Maliki has called for Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak to be sacked after Mutlak said the premier led a “dictatorship” and was “worse than Saddam Hussein”.
The meeting, called after more than a dozen attacks in Baghdad killed 60 people on Thursday in the deadliest violence Iraq has seen for four months, had been scheduled for 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) in parliament.