July was already a bad month for Iraq, and it keeps getting worse.

Car bombs pounded at least 11 different sites in the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad today, killing at least 90 people and wounding 266 others It was the sort of death toll common during the height of the US occupation, and increasingly common this summer in Iraq.

Sectarian violence is back with a vengeance in Iraq, and the death toll for July is already in excess of 800 according to AFP figures, well higher than the toll for the month of June, which was itself the deadliest June in several years.

Since late April this is the direction Iraq is going, with domestic sectarian tensions mingling with the bloody civil war in neighboring Syria to create a powderkeg that the Maliki government seems ill-equipped to deal with.

Today’s bombings centered mostly around Shi’ite neighborhoods in Baghdad, with other smaller bombings targeting security forces. The Interior Ministry warned of the risk of another civil war in Iraq, but the question at this point is whether such a war actually already began months ago.