Iraqi Prime Minister accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of fuelling bloodshed and backing militant groups in Iraq and said they have effectively declared war on the country

Iraqi Prime Minister accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of fuelling bloodshed and backing militant groups in Iraq and said they have effectively declared war on the country.

In an interview broadcast on Saturday, Maliki said the two states "are attacking Iraq, through Syria and in a direct way, and they announced war on Iraq, as they announced it on Syria, and unfortunately it is on a sectarian and political basis."
  
"These two countries are primarily responsible for the sectarian and terrorist and security crisis of Iraq," the prime minister told France 24 television.
  
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have emerged as regional rivals because, while both have provided support to militants in Syria, the two countries have also sparred in recent weeks over Doha's support for the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed Egyptian president Mohammad Mursi.
  
Baghdad has long complained that support for militant groups fighting in Syria finds its way through to Iraq with weapons in particular ending up in the hands of ‘jihadists’.
  
Maliki said in the interview that Riyadh and Doha were providing political, financial and media support to militant groups and accused them of "buying weapons for the benefit of these terrorist organizations". And he accused Saudi Arabia of supporting global "terrorism."
  
He condemned "the dangerous Saudi stance" of supporting "terrorism in the world -- it supports it in Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and Egypt and Libya, and even in countries outside" the Arab world.
  
Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal period of killings in which tens of thousands of people died.