Dozens killed in string of Iraq attacks
A swift series of bombings and shootings killed 35 people across the Iraqi capital early today in attacks that mostly appeared to target police, officials said.
In the worst attack, a car bomb went off near a security checkpoint in Baghdad’s shopping district of Karradah, killing nine people and wounding another 26, including four policemen.
Footage of the scene showed blood-covered people walking away, and storefronts damaged. A grey cloud of smoke hung over the blast site where cars were charred and crumpled.
At least eight more bombs exploded during the morning across Baghdad, killing 18 more people, and gunmen with silenced pistols killed eight policemen at security checkpoints, officials said.
The casualties were confirmed by Baghdad hospital officials.
Further attacks in Baqouba, Kirkuk and Salahuddin provinces were also reported in the string of assaults that unfolded over a two-hour period.
Officials in Baqouba, 35 miles north east of the capital, said a suicide bomber blew up his car outside a police station near a market. Two people were killed and eight wounded.
In the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, two police patrols hit roadside bombs. Twenty policemen were injured in the attacks, said Major General Sarhat Qadir.
Bombs in the town of Tuz Khormato, outside Kirkuk, wounded three guards outside the office of a Kurdish political party, and eight policemen were wounded by a roadside bomb in the town of Madain, 14 miles south east of the capital, said Mayor Jalal Baban.
Widespread violence has decreased since a few years ago when Iraq teetered on the brink of civil war, but bombings and shootings still happen almost daily.
Iraq’s police are generally considered to be the weakest element of the country’s security forces.
Earlier this week, 20 policemen and recruits were killed by a suicide bomber outside the Baghdad police academy.
The country has been besieged by political turbulence that began the day after US troops pulled out of Iraq, when an arrest warrant was issued for Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashemi on charges he commandeered death squads targeting security forces and government officials.
Al-Hashemi, the country’s highest-ranking Sunni, has denied the charges that he described as politically motivated, and accused the Shiite-led government of trying to unseat him.
