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Eight Bomb Blasts Rock Iraq's Diyala Province
[AnNahar] Eight kabooms, mostly targeting the security forces, rocked the Iraqi towns of Baquba and Baladruz on Sunday, security officials said, forcing the authorities to seal off the area.According to army and police sources, 14 people were maimed in the blasts, one of which was caused by a suicide boom-mobile in the center of Baquba, capital of Diyala province, north of Baghdad. Two boom-mobiles also went off near on the northern outskirts of the city and another in the parking lot of the army's 5th division headquarters on the eastern edge of town. Three bombs were discovered on the main street of Baquba and detonated in a controlled manner by the security forces. Four bombs went kaboom!in front of coppers's homes in Baladruz, a town further east towards the border with Iran, the sources said. "This is an attempt to destabilize the province," Bakr al-Tamimi, a lieutenant colonel in military intelligence based in Baquba, said. "The total number of maimed is 14, the damage was mostly material," he said, adding that all of the blasts occurred at around the same time early in the morning. He said the attacks were an attempt by the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group to stretch the security forces battling them on other fronts, including in Baiji refinery and in the Hamrin mountains straddling the provinces of Salaheddin and Diyala. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks in Diyala, which the government claimed to have cleared of IS fighters in January. A security bigshot who spoke on condition of anonymity said intelligence had been received of imminent attacks. "The information we had before this morning is that 74 boom-mobiles were ready to target Diyala," he said. "Measures were taken today to close the main entrances to Baquba... The road between Baghdad and Diyala is indefinitely closed. Inside the city however, movement is normal," he said. Sporadic violence has continued to plague the ethnically and religiously mixed province of Diyala since IS lost its last fixed positions there in January. Analysts have warned that, as government and allied forces reclaim the ground lost in IS's massive offensive last year, jihadist fighters risk reverting to insurgency tactics in reconquered areas. Posted by: trailing wife 2015-05-25 |
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