BAGHDAD—Iraq's security forces killed 38 people in clashes with mostly Sunni demonstrators and antigovernment insurgents in the northern city of al-Hawijah, as a raid on a protest camp transformed months of sectarian tensions into an armed conflict.

The clashes, on top of recent attacks on Shiite civilians by Sunni-aligned militants, risk fueling an outbreak of violence that has echoes in sectarian conflicts across the region.

Antiriot forces raided the al-Hawijah protest camp in Kirkuk province early Tuesday after protesters refused to hand over militants suspected in the killing of an Iraqi soldier several days earlier. Security forces, battling protesters with guns, killed 25 people, arrested 75 and recovered a large cache of weapons, according to the Ministry of Defense. Three soldiers were killed.
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Sunni militants in Iraq's western provinces, responding to the raid, seized police checkpoints in Riyadh and Rashad for several hours, until military reinforcements launched counterattacks, killing 13 gunmen, according to Iraqi security officials.

Soldiers cut road access to Kirkuk—long a flash point for Iraq's ethnic and religious tensions—on top of a curfew in regions to the south and west.

The protests in al-Hawijah and similar camps mark a powerful confluence of opposition groups that include reconstituted remnants of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime, al Qaeda-connected militants and Sunni tribal leaders.

The Sunni movement, in Kirkuk and the Sunni-dominated region to its southwest, has sought since late last year to undermine the Shiite-dominated national government in Baghdad. The Sunni opposition says they have been marginalized by the country's national power-sharing system.

Sunni religious leaders who had counseled peaceful protests for months were calling on their followers to take up arms against the Baghdad government on Tuesday.

Ten years after Saddam Hussein's overthrow, some of his associates and followers have banded together with other Sunni groups in the most substantial bid for Sunni power since his downfall. WSJ's Sam Dagher reports from Al-Hawijah, Iraq.

"We were always telling the protesters not to carry a gun or start attacking the armed forces," said cleric Abdul Malik al-Sa'adi on his official website. "Now self-defense has become a religious and legal duty, so defend yourselves and he who will be killed defending his money, family or country will be considered a martyr."

The movement has been supported by Iraq's Kurds. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, said he had temporarily dismissed Kurdish Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, after warning that he would replace Kurdish cabinet ministers unless they ended a boycott of cabinet meetings. The boycott began in early March after parliament held a budget vote without Kurdish members present.

"What you're seeing Maliki essentially saying to anyone who wants to listen is that I don't need any of you," said Crispin Hawes, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at New York-based Eurasia Group, of the move against the Kurdish ministers.

Iraq saw destructive sectarian conflict during the height of the U.S. engagement in the country in 2006 and 2007, and the so-called Arab Spring political uprisings in Iraq's neighbors have contributed to a resurgence of sectarian volatility here.

The Sunni movement in Iraq is fueled in part by the uprising against a Shiite-linked, Iranian-backed regime in neighboring Syria, where Sunni extremists allied with Iraqi militants have grown in strength.

Some Iraqis expect a chain reaction after the raid on Tuesday. "I think it will be the beginning of a civil war and the beginning of the country falling apart," said Nada Ibrahim Aljubori, a member of the Sunni-backed al-Iraqiya List political coalition. "It won't fall apart in an easy way, it will be thousands of people dying."

Protests in Iraq's western provinces flared late last year when security forces under Mr. Maliki arrested bodyguards for a prominent Sunni cabinet member, accusing them of participating in an anti-Shiite militia.

Sunni protesters say Sunnis have been pushed aside by Mr. Maliki's Shiite-backed government and victimized by antiterrorism laws. More than 10,000 Sunni youth are in jail under the laws.

Mr. Maliki's cabinet forbade the Sunni-majority provinces of Anbar and Nineveh from voting in provincial elections on Saturday due to security concerns related to the protests. The cabinet said Tuesday that the vote would be held in July. Mr. Maliki's critics said the vote's delay was a political move.

Mr. Maliki said he would convene a committee to investigate Tuesday's violence that would include mostly of Mr. Maliki's Shiite coreligionists and Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni ally of Mr. Maliki's.

Despite his loyalties to Mr. Maliki, Mr. Mutlaq walked out of a cabinet meeting Tuesday to protest the al-Hawijah killings. Two of his fellow Sunni cabinet members resigned.

In what appeared to be a separate incident, two bombs killed four people on Tuesday morning near a mosque in Dawra, in southern Baghdad.

Tuesday's violence in the Sunni regions grew out of a protest by anti-Maliki Sunni activists, who marched to a military checkpoint following Friday's afternoon prayers. A fight with military forces ensued that left one soldier and one protester dead. Protesters stole some of the military's weapons, according to Iraqi security forces.

The military responded by barricading the nearby al-Hawijah camp, preventing protesters from entering or leaving. After the protesters refused to turn in those who the military suspected had killed the soldier before a Sunday deadline, the military invaded the camp on Tuesday morning.

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