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Dozens of Casualties in String of Attacks Across Iraq
(about 5 hours later)
BAGHDAD — A string of bombing and a shooting killed at least 30 and wounded scores across Iraq on Sunday, extending a wave of violence that is raising fears of a return to widespread killing a decade after the American-led invasion.
BAGHDAD — Car bombings and attacks across Iraq killed at least 27 people and wounded more than 100 on Sunday, security officials said, the latest in a wave of sectarian violence that has erupted across the country in recent months.
Violence has spiked in Iraq in recent months, with the death toll rising to levels not seen since 2008. Nearly 2,000 have been killed since the start of April.
Several bombs exploded in five southern Shiite-dominated provinces, killing civilians. Other attacks, near Tikrit and Mosul, struck security forces, officials said.
There was no claim of responsibility, but the attacks bore the hallmark of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which uses car bombs, suicide bombers and coordinated attacks to target security forces, members of Iraq’s Shiite majority, and others.
No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni extremists have stepped up their efforts to undermine the Shiite-led government and to stoke sectarian divisions since the beginning of the year. Nearly 2,000 Iraqis have been killed since April, according to the Interior Ministry, making it the country’s most violent period since 2008. Sunday’s attacks also came a day after the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, threatened Shiites with more violence.
The attacks also came a day after the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq defiantly rejected an order from the terror network’s central command to stop claiming control over the organization’s Syria affiliate, according to a message purportedly from him. Comments from the Qaeda leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, showed his group’s determination to link its fight against the Shiite-led government in Baghdad with the cause of rebels trying to topple the Iran-backed Syrian regime.
The first attacks occurred in Basra Province in southern Iraq, where an Iraqi official and five civilians were killed when the official’s convoy was struck by two car bombs, officials said. Ten people were wounded.
Most of the car bombs hit Shiite-majority areas and were the cause of most of the casualties, killing 26, officials said. The blasts hit half a dozen cities and towns in the south and center of the country.
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near a vegetable market, killing five people and wounding 12 others, the police said. Later, three car bombs exploded in Wasit, Nasiriya and Babil Provinces, killing five civilians and wounding more than 70 others.
The blasts began when a parked car bomb went off early morning in the industrial area of the city of Kut, killing three people and wounding 14 others. That was followed by another car bomb outside the city targeted a gathering of construction workers that killed two and wounded 12, according to police.
In Madaen, southeast of Baghdad, two car bombs exploded on the main road, killing 5 people and wounding 10, the police said.
Kut is 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.
In the northern city of Mosul, four police officers were killed and four others wounded in clashes with unidentified gunmen, a police official said. And in Tikrit, a roadside bomb struck an army patrol, killing two soldiers, a security official said.
In the nearby oil-rich city of Basra, a car bomb exploded in a downtown street, police said. As police and rescuers rushed to the scene of the initial blast, the second car exploded. Six people were reported killed. Basra is 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Yasir
Ghazi contributed reporting.
About an hour later, two parked car bombs ripped through two neighborhoods in the southern city of Nasiriyah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, killing one and wounding 17, another police officer said.
And in the town of Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, two people were killed and nine wounded when a car bomb went off in an open market.
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, a blast struck a produce market, killing eight and wounding 28.
And in Madain, a roadside bomb and then a car bomb exploded, killing three and wounding 14. Madain is 14 miles southeast of Baghdad. And a car bomb exploded in a parking lot near Hillah killing one and wounding nine. Hillah is about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
The shooting happened near the restive northern city of Mosul. Police officials say gunmen attacked police guarding a remote stretch of an oil pipeline, killing four and wounding five. Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has been the scene of some of the deadliest unrest outside of the Baghdad area in recent weeks.
