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| Iraq |
| Iraq attacks, including car bombs, kill 26 |
| 2013-11-01 |
| [Al Ahram] Five boom-mobiles north of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... killed 19 people Thursday, while attacks elsewhere in Iraq left seven more dead, officials said, the latest casualties in a nationwide spike in unrest. The attacks, which maimed dozens, come as Iraq witnesses its worst violence since 2008, a surge in bloodshed that has killed more than 5,400 people this year despite authorities having carried out a swathe of operations and implemented tightened security measures. They struck as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visits Washington to press for military equipment and greater cooperation with the United States in fighting myrmidons. In Thursday's deadliest attack, twin boom-mobiles in a residential area in Tuz Khurmatu, a disputed town north of Storied Baghdad, killed seven people and maimed 42 others. Three of the dead were from the same family. As emergency responders rushed to the scene of the attack, a third bomb went off, but did not cause any casualties, Mayor Shallal Abdul told AFP. "The two boom-mobiles went off simultaneously, and bear the fingerprints of Al-Qaeda," a police major, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP. Tuz Khurmatu is a majority Kurdish town which lies in a disputed area of northern Iraq, where both Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region and the central government in Storied Baghdad vie for power. It is frequently hit by deadly attacks. Two more near-simultaneous boom-mobiles went off in Khales, a restive town north of Storied Baghdad, as a police patrol was passing, killing five people, including a policeman, officials said. The attack, which struck in area filled with car dealerships, also maimed 15 others, including four coppers. Another boom-mobile in Muqdadiyah, north of Storied Baghdad, killed four people. Police meanwhile found the bodies of three blindfolded women bearing multiple gunshot wounds to the head, execution-style, at an empty plot in a Shiite-majority neighbourhood in northeast Storied Baghdad. A police officer and a medical official said initial investigations showed the women were shot earlier on Thursday. Summary executions were commonplace at the height of the Sunni-Shiite conflict in 2006-2007, when many thousands died. Also on Thursday, gunnies killed a soldier and maimed two others in an attack targeting their patrol in the northern city of djinn-infested Mosul, while a roadside kaboom targeting an army patrol northwest of the city left a soldier dead and two others maimed, officials said. And two separate gun attacks and a roadside kabooming north of the capital killed five people, including an anti-Qaeda militiaman, police and doctors said. |
| Posted by:Fred |