Deadliest Iraq attacks since US pullout
IRAQ: A wave of more than 30 attacks across Iraq killed 88 people and
wounded more than 400 on Saturday and Sunday, security and medical
sources said, with the security forces and markets among the targets
which have been the deadliest Iraq attacks since US pullout.
The latest violence brings the number of people killed already this
month to 118, according to an AFP tally.
While insurgents opposed to the Baghdad government are regarded as
weaker than in past years, they are still capable of launching periodic
mass-casualty attacks across the country.
The latest assaults came as Iraq's Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a
leading Sunni, was sentenced in absentia on Sunday to hang for murder,
although the carnage began hours before the sentence was handed down.
In the deadliest attack, two car bombs exploded in a market on Sunday
near the Imam Ali al-Sharqi shrine in southern Iraq, a security official
said.
Dr Ali al-Alaa, a Maysan province health department official, said
the blasts killed 14 people and wounded 60. Five car bombs exploded in
predominantly Shiite areas of the Iraqi capital on Sunday night.
In north Baghdad, a car bomb killed at least 13 people and wounded at
least 32, while another in Shuala killed at least five and wounded 22,
another in Urr killed four and wounded 13, and a fourth in Hurriyah
killed three and wounded 14, an interior ministry official and a medical
source said.
In the west of the city, a car bomb targeted a market in the Washash
area, killing at least seven people and wounding 21, the ministry
official and a medical source said.
Before midnight on Saturday, gunmen assaulted an army checkpoint near
Balad north of Baghdad and a roadside bomb exploded when additional
soldiers arrived at the scene.
Eleven soldiers, including two officers, were killed and eight
wounded, an army colonel and a medical source at Balad hospital said. A
police captain was also shot dead on Saturday night in the town of Garma,
security and medical officials said.
AFP |
