A suicide truck bomber struck a Sunni tribal leader's house near the Syrian border on Wednesday, killing at least five people in the latest attack by suspected Sunni extremists on provincial officials and tribal figures. A parked car bomb also exploded near a group of black market gasoline vendors in a town elsewhere in northern Iraq, killing at least five people and wounding seven, police said. Another bomb struck wounded victims as they were being taken to the hospital. The blast from the car bomb was intensified when the barrels of gasoline being sold exploded in the center of Shurqat, 140 miles north of Baghdad, according to the police officials.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has warned that it planned a new campaign of violence during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Better hurry up; the month is half gone, and Congress has already moved on to other issues.
A U.S. military spokesman on Wednesday acknowledged an "upturn" in violence in recent days, including suicide attacks on police and tribal leaders presumably by Sunni extremists. "We have seen an upturn in levels of violence in the last few days and so we are continuing our efforts to suppress it and keep the pressure on extremist networks," Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner told reporters."We will continue to keep that focus because we know that this is a specific period of time ... that the insurgents will try to increase the levels of violence," he added, referring to the ongoing holy month of Ramadan.