[USATODAY] A string of bombings Sunday across Iraq, many in Shiite-majority cities, killed at least 42 people and maimed dozens, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attacks, but waves of bombings are frequently used by al-Qaeda's Iraq branch.
The Sunni bad boy group and other Sunni gunnies often targets Shiite civilians in an effort to undermine the Shiite-led government. Al-Qaeda's Death Eater ideology considers Shiites heretics.
The deadliest of Sunday's attacks, many of which struck busy commercial areas, happened in the southern city of Hillah, 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
. Back-to-back boom-mobileings hit an outdoor market there, killing eight people and wounding 22, police said.
Two parked boom-mobiles destroyed a commercial area in the city of Suwayrah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Storied Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 14. Two other boom-mobiles went
kaboom!simultaneously in the city of Kut, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Storied Baghdad, killing four and maimed 16, according to police.
In the nearby city of Samawah, 370 kilometers (230 miles) southeast of Storied Baghdad, four people were killed and 13 maimed when two boom-mobiles went
kaboom!. Two other boom-mobiles killed three and maimed 13 in the city of Diwaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital.
Samarra was struck twice Sunday, a day after a boom-mobileing in the Sunni-dominated city left 17 dead. The memory of the 2006 bombing of the city's al-Askari Shiite shrine still haunts many Iraqis because it set off years of retaliatory bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite Death Eaters.
Two people were killed and 15 were maimed in the morning when a boom-mobile went
kaboom!near a group of mourners at a funeral for some of the previous day's dead. A jacket wallah struck a security checkpoint near the shrine in the Sunni-dominated city later in the day, killing four and wounding 10, said Mizhar Fleih, the deputy head of the municipal council there.
In other violence Sunday, police reported five people killed and 34 maimed in the southern city of Basra and the central towns of Mahmoudiyah and Madain.
In the western Storied Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiyah, police said a bomb went off near a row of shops, killing two people and wounding nine others. Three others were killed in a blast near a soccer field in Storied Baghdad's mainly Shiite southeastern suburb of Nahrwan. Yet another bomb went
kaboom!in the western Amariyah neighborhood, killing two and wounding 10, police said.
Medical officials confirmed the causalities. The police and hospital officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.