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Baghdad and Kirkuk hit by deadly bomb blasts Iraqi cities hit by deadly bomb blasts
(about 4 hours later)
A series of morning blasts in the Iraqi capital and the northern city of Kirkuk has killed 15 people, police say. More than 20 bombs have hit cities and towns across Iraq, killing at least 36 people and wounding more than 100, according to police and hospital sources. The attacks have raised fears of sectarian strife in a country keen to show it can maintain security.
Brigadier General Sarhad Qadir said nine people died in three explosions across the ethnically mixed Kirkuk on Thursday. In Baghdad, three car bombs, two roadside bombs and one suicide car bomb exploded in mainly Shia areas in what looked like co-ordinated attacks, killing 15 people and wounding 61.
At almost the same time, attacks rocked three Shia neighbourhoods 180 miles (290km) south in Baghdad, killing six people. Two car bombs and three roadside bombs aimed at police and army patrols in the northern oil city of Kirkuk killed eight people and wounded 26, police and hospital sources said.
Police said more than 30 people were wounded in the two cities. "I was trying to stop traffic to let a police patrol pass. When it passed, a car bomb exploded and I fell on the ground and police took me to the hospital," a policeman wounded in the face said as doctors tended his wounds. He declined to be named.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualties. All Baghdad officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information. Heightened tension between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds in the fragile coalition government since US troops withdrew in December has raised fears of a return to sectarian violence of the kind that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war a few years ago.
The country is less violent than at the height of that conflict in 2006-07, but bombings and killings still happen daily, often aimed at Shia areas and local security forces.
The biggest attack in Baghdad was in the Kadhimiya district, where a car bomb killed five and wounded 24, sources said.
A car bomb targeting the health minister's motorcade went off in the central Haifa district, killing two civilians and wounding at least four of the minister's guards, a police source said. The minister's spokesman said five guards were wounded in the attack.
Car and roadside bombs also went off in Baghdad's Amil, Palestine Street and Zaafaraniya districts.
Elsewhere in northern Iraq, two car bombs targeting government-backed Sunni Sahwa militia went off in Samarra, two blasts hit Baquba, a roadside bomb exploded in Mosul and another roadside device exploded in Taji.
There were shooting incidents and one policeman was killed in the town of Hadid, 10km west of Baquba, when gunmen in a passing car opened fire on the station where he worked, police sources said.
In the mainly Sunni Muslim province of Anbar in the west, two car bombs targeting police killed four and wounded 10 in Ramadi while a roadside bomb wounded four people in Falluja.
Attacks in Iraq are mostly blamed on Sunni Arab insurgents who have refused to lay down arms after the withdrawal of US forces in December.