BAGHDAD — Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has left a Baghdad hospital and is being transferred to Germany for treatment after suffering a stroke earlier this week, his office said Thursday.

The 79-year-old Kurdish statesman was admitted to hospital on Monday night.

He has often mediated among Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and in a growing dispute over oil between Baghdad and the country's autonomous Kurdistan region.

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"Treatment has allowed suitable conditions for his excellency to be transferred outside the country," the statement said, adding that Talabani's health had improved.

It was uncertain whether he would be able to return to his post, and his potential exit from politics is raising concerns about what could be a messy succession battle.

A year after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, the Arab-led central government and the Kurdish region are increasingly divided over oil and land in a rift that threatens to escalate into open conflict.

Iraq President Talabani 'stable' after stroke

Just days before he was hospitalized, Talabani had negotiated between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Kurdistan authorities after both sent troops to face off along an internal border where they have laid rival claims to ethnically mixed territories.

A year after the last American troops left, the Arab-led central government and the Kurdish region are caught in a rift over oil and land that threatens to escalate into fighting.

Al-Maliki and Kurdistan's leaders have twice sent troops to the internal border where both lay claim to ethnically mixed territories dotted with oilfields.

Turkey is also embroiled in the dispute, angering Baghdad by talking about energy cooperation and oil pipelines that would give Kurdistan a route to export its own crude and effectively end its reliance on the central government's funds.

Blasts hit Iraq's Kirkuk, disputed territories

With oil majors such Exxon and Chevron now shifting their focus northward to sign deals with Kurdistan and away from Iraq's southern oilfields, leaders on both sides are warning of the risks of the dispute sliding into an ethnic war.

"If it erupts ... it will be a painful, shameful ethnic conflict," al-Maliki said warning of the risks following last month's military build-up around disputed towns.

At the heart of the dispute is the oil wealth under the swathe of land known as the "Disputed Territories" along the vague internal border that includes the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, known to some as the "Jerusalem of the Kurds.”

Baghdad has warned Exxon and other companies that deals struck with Kurdistan are illegal, a violation of what Iraqi officials see as a policy area that should be under central government control. The Kurds say the constitution's federalism guarantees their right to develop their region's oil resources.

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BAGHDAD — Bombings on Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and a blast on an Iranian pilgrim bus killed more than 30 people on Saturday, marring Iraqi celebrations of the second day of the Islamic Eid al Adha religious festival.

Violence in Iraq has eased sharply, but Sunni Islamist insurgents and al-Qaida's Iraq wing often target Shiites in an attempt to stir up the kind of sectarian tensions that dragged the country close to civil war in 2006-2007.

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Two car bombs exploded on Saturday, one ripping into a restaurant in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City and killing at least 23 people, police and hospital sources said.

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"I was just selling fruit and we were surprised by a huge explosion on the other side of the street," Hassan Falih Shami, a grocery stall owner near the site of the blast. "You can see pools of blood, the shoes and pieces of clothing."

Hours earlier, a roadside bomb planted near an open-air market killed seven people, including three children at a playground. Another blast killed six people when it hit a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims to a Baghdad shrine, police and hospital officials said.

Police said the attack on the Iranian pilgrims came from a bomb that had been attached to their bus. It exploded around 300 yards from a police checkpoint, sending the bus out of control before it flipped over on its side.

Insurgents have carried out at least one major attack a month since the last U.S. troops left in December. Iraqi officials worry Syria's crisis is bolstering Iraqi insurgents.

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The monthly death toll from attacks in Iraq doubled in September to 365, the highest number of casualties in two years, including a series of bombings targeting Shiite neighborhoods that killed more than 100 people.

Security officials had said they believe insurgents would try to carry out a large attack during the religious holiday, which started on Friday.

Car bombs exploded and mortars landed around the Shiite neighborhood of Shula, northwestern Baghdad, on Tuesday killing eight people and wounding 28, and another person was killed by a mortar round in Kadhimiya area.

Reporting by Raheem Salman; Writing by Patrick Markey

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The WikiLeaks website began publishing on Thursday what it said were more than 100 U.S. Defense Department files detailing military detention policies in camps in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in the years after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets.

In a statement, WikiLeaks criticized regulations it said had led to abuse and impunity and urged human rights activists to use the documents, to be released over the next month, to research what it called "policies of unaccountability."

The statement quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying: "The 'Detainee Policies' show the anatomy of the beast that is post-9/11 detention, the carving out of a dark space where law and rights do not apply, where persons can be detained without a trace at the convenience of the U.S. Department of Defense."

"It shows the excesses of the early days of war against an unknown 'enemy' and how these policies matured and evolved," it said, and led to "the permanent state of exception that the United States now finds itself in, a decade later."

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A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in London said it had no immediate comment.

In January, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said the United States was still flouting international law at Guantanamo Bay by arbitrarily and indefinitely detaining individuals.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in 2001 when militants from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Then President George W. Bush set up a detention camp at a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo in Cuba after U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan to expel al-Qaida following the September 11 raids. Of the 779 men held there, 167 remained as of mid-September 2012.

Interrogation
WikiLeaks said a number of documents it was releasing related to interrogation of detainees, and these showed direct physical violence was prohibited.

But it added the documents showed "a formal policy of terrorizing detainees during interrogations, combined with a policy of destroying interrogation recordings, has led to abuse and impunity".

A number of what can only be described as "policies of unaccountability" would also be released, it said.

One such document was a 2005 document "Policy on Assigning Detainee Internment Serial Numbers," it said.

"This document is concerned with discreetly 'disappearing' detainees into the custody of other U.S. government agencies while keeping their names out of U.S. military central records — by systematically holding off from assigning a prisoner record number," the WikiLeaks statement said.

WikiLeaks did not elaborate. But human rights activists say that after the September 11 attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency used "black sites" in friendly countries to interrogate and sometimes torture suspected militants beyond the reach of normal legal protections.

Playing on 'love' and 'fear'
While Bush acknowledged the existence of a CIA program for detaining and questioning militants outside of the United States in speech in September 2006, the government has never publicly confirmed the location of the sites.

Some of the policies applied to other countries' personnel, Wikileaks said, citing what it said was a 13-page interrogation policy document from 2005 for U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

It said the document detailed techniques such as the "Emotional Love Approach: Playing on the love a detained person has for family, homeland or comrades". In contrast, in the "Fear Up (Harsh)" approach, it said "the interrogator behaves in an overpowering manner with a loud and threatening voice in order to convince the source he does indeed have something to fear; that he has no option but to co-operate."

The documents released on Thursday date from 2001 to 2004.

Assange, whose website previously angered the United States by releasing thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations. He denies wrongdoing.

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ANKARA, Turkey -- Fugitive Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on Monday denounced a death sentence against him as politically motivated and issued by a "kangaroo court." He said he would not return to Iraq from Turkey within 30 days as demanded.

The politically-charged case sparked a crisis in Iraq's government and has fueled Sunni Muslim and Kurdish resentment against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who critics say is monopolizing power.

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"Yesterday Prime Minister Maliki and his ... judiciary concluded the final phase of the theatrical campaign against me using a kangaroo court set up for this purpose. It was really a shambles," Hashemi told a news conference in the Turkish capital Ankara.

"Therefore, while reconfirming my and my guards' absolute innocence, I totally reject and will never recognize the unfair, the unjust, the politically motivated verdict," he said.

Sectarian divide
Al-Hashemi, a Sunni, had accused al-Maliki's government of controlling the judiciary and of orchestrating a crackdown on Sunni opponents. He had refused to appear in a court he dismissed as biased.

Al-Hashemi and his son-in-law were both found guilty in absentia of murdering a female lawyer and security official, Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, a judiciary spokesman said.

The trial, which began last spring, featured testimony from the vice president's former bodyguards, who said they were ordered, and then paid, to launch the attacks. Government forces who found weapons when they raided al-Hashemi's house and that of his son-in-law also testified in the case, as did relatives of the victims.

Iraq's government has accused al-Hashemi of playing a role in 150 bombings, assassinations and other attacks from 2005 to 2011 -- most of which were allegedly carried out by his bodyguards and other employees. Most of the attacks the government claims al-Hashemi was behind targeted the vice president's political foes, as well as government officials, security forces and Shiite pilgrims.

The charges against the vice president span the worst years of bloodshed that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, when sectarian attacks between Sunni and Shiite militants pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

Death toll in Iraq tops 100 as fugitive VP gets death sentence

Al-Hashemi has claimed that his bodyguards were likely tortured or otherwise coerced into testifying against him.

"This is a political decision. All our respect to the Iraqi judicial system, but this was political," said lawmaker Jaber al-Jaberi, a member of Hashemi's Sunni-backed Iraqiya party.

Strengthening al-Maliki's hand
Iraqi political analyst Hadi Jalo said the verdict against al-Hashemi will help the embattled prime minster.

"With this verdict al-Maliki will be stronger as it will strengthen his hands," Jalo said. "The verdict, the most important since the trial of the Saddam Hussein who was hanged in 2006 with al-Maliki in office, will serve as a message to all that the government will not tolerate" misdeeds, he said.

Hours before the sentence was announced on Sunday, a wave of bombings and shootings had already killed dozens of people and a car bomb had exploded outside a French consular office in Nassiriya in southern Iraq.

Related: US auditors say $200m wasted on Iraqi police training

Since the last U.S. troops left, al-Maliki's Shiite-led government has been politically deadlocked and insurgents have continued to strike, apparently hoping to ignite the kind of sectarian tensions that drove Iraq close to civil war in 2006-2007.

After the fall of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Iraq's Shiite majority, many Iraqi Sunnis feel they have been sidelined.

Sunni politicians say al-Maliki is failing to live up to agreements to share power among the parties, a charge his backers dismiss, pointing to Sunnis in key posts.

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When the al-Hashemi charges were announced, his Iraqiya party attempted a short-lived boycott of parliament and the Cabinet. But the party has since splintered further, strengthening the political hand of al-Maliki’s Shiite coalition.

Heightened political tension is often accompanied by a surge in violence as Sunni Islamist insurgents try to capitalize on instability to strike at the government, local security forces and Shiite religious targets.

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Major coordinated attacks continue
Violence in Iraq has eased since the dark days of sectarian slaughter that erupted after the 2003 invasion. But insurgents are still carrying out at least one major coordinated attack a month.

Infighting in the religiously mixed government, and a resurgence of a local al-Qaida wing, are raising fears of a return to wider violence, especially as Iraq is struggling to contain spillover from Syria's crisis over the border.

'Emergency red list' targets Syria's looted treasures

Iraq's local al-Qaida affiliate, Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for major attacks on security forces and Shiite neighborhoods. Former members of Saddam's outlawed Baathist party and other Sunni Islamist groups are also fighting the government.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated at 5 p.m. ET:  Six car bombs hit mainly Shiite Baghdad neighborhoods Sunday evening, killing 51 people, police said, capping a day when earlier attacks killed 58 people and fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi was sentenced to death on murder charges.

"I heard women screaming, I saw people running in all directions, chairs scattered in the street. My windows were blown out, my mother and two kids were injured too," said Alla Majid, still shaking after a blast in Baghdad's Sadr City. 

Hashemi, a Sunni, fled to Turkey after the authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in December, a move that threatened to collapse a fragile power-sharing deal among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs at a time when U.S. troops were pulling out.

Hashemi had accused Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, of orchestrating a crackdown on Sunni opponents and refused to appear in a court he dismissed as biased.

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He and his son-in-law were both found guilty in absentia of murdering a female lawyer and security official, a judiciary spokesman said.

"This is a political decision. All our respect to the Iraqi judicial system, but this was political," said lawmaker Jaber al-Jaberi, a member of Hashemi's Iraqiya party.

Hashemi's lawyer said there would be no appeal because the trial was conducted in absentia.

Since the last U.S. troops left, Maliki's government has been politically deadlocked and insurgents continue to strike, hoping to ignite the kind of sectarian tensions that drove Iraq close to civil war in 2006-2007.

Hours before the sentencing was announced, a wave of bombings and shootings killed at least 58 people across the country from the northern city of Kirkuk to southern Nassiriya where a car bomb hit a French consular office.

The most serious of the earlier bombings happened near the city of Amara, 185 miles south of the capital, when two car bombs exploded outside a Shiite shrine and a market place, killing at least 16 people, officials said.

With its main hospital overflowing with the injured, mosques in Amara used prayer loudspeakers to call for blood donations.

More were killed in bombings in the towns of Kirkuk, Baquba, Samarra, Basra and Tuz Khurmato, and there was also a strike on an army base and a bombing of security guard recruits for the Iraqi North Oil Company.

The car bomb outside the building housing the French consular office in Nassiriya, 185 miles south of Baghdad, killed a police guard and wounded four, authorities said. The consul, an Iraqi citizen, was not at the office.

After the fall of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Iraq's Shiite majority, many Iraqi Sunnis feel they have been sidelined.

Sunni politicians say Maliki is failing to live up to agreements to share government power among the parties, a charge his backers dismiss by pointing to Sunnis in key posts.

When the Hashemi charges were announced at the end of last year, his Iraqiya party called for a boycott of parliament and the cabinet. But the party has since splintered further.

Related: US auditors say $200m wasted on Iraqi police training

Heightened political tension is often accompanied by a surge in violence as Sunni Islamist insurgents try to capitalize on instability to strike at the government, local security forces and Shi'ite religious targets.

Violence in Iraq has eased since the dark days of sectarian slaughter after the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam. But insurgents are still carrying out at least one major coordinated attack a month.

Infighting in the religiously mixed government, and a resurgence of a local al Qaeda wing, are raising fears of a return to wider violence, especially as Iraq is struggling to contain spillover from Syria's crisis over the border.

Iraq's local al-Qaida affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for major attacks on security forces and Shiite neighborhoods. Former members of Saddam's outlawed Baathist party and other Sunni Islamist groups are also fighting the government.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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