BAGHDAD, Aug 15: Suicide attackers and car bombs hit cities across Iraq on Monday, killing at least 60 people in apparently coordinated assaults authorities blamed on Al Qaeda affiliates intent on destabilising the US-backed government.
The attacks punctured the recent calm of holy month of Ramazan and underscored the continued fragility of Iraq's security as US troops prepare to leave more than eight years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
In the worst assault, a roadside bomb followed by a car bomb targeting police killed at least 37 people in Kut, a mainly Shia city 150km southeast of the capital Baghdad, police and health officials said.
The blasts shattered facades of shops and homes in the city.
Firefighters picked through wreckage and blood was spattered across the street near the crumpled remains of the car bomb.
Dhiyauddin Jalil, a director of the provincial health department, said more than 68 people were wounded in the Kut blasts and doctors in the city's main hospital said they were struggling to treat casualties, many with severe burns.
“These attacks... are trying to influence the security situation and undermine confidence in the security forces,” said Major-General Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Baghdad security operations, blaming Al Qaeda-linked groups.
Kut had been relatively quiet since August last year when a suicide bomber killed 30 policemen and destroyed a police station as the US military ended combat operations in Iraq.
Dozens more were killed or wounded on Monday in bombings and attacks in other cities north and south of the capital.
At least eight people were killed and 14 wounded when a suicide car bomber attacked a municipality building in Khan Bani Saad, about 30km northeast of Baghdad, in the province of Diyala, two police sources said on Monday.
Two suicide bombers attacked an Iraqi counter-terrorism unit in Tikrit, 150km north of Baghdad, killing at least two policemen and wounding six in a failed attempt to free Al Qaeda prisoners, a police official said.
One attacker detonated his suicide vest hoping to kill a high-ranking counter-terrorism officer, and the other was shot dead during the attack, said Captain Jassim al-Jibouri, an officer with the Tikrit counter-terrorism unit.
In the southern city of Najaf, at least six people were killed and up to 79 more wounded when two car bombs exploded, health authorities said. Police captain Hadi al-Najafi in Najaf said the bombs targeted a police building.
“There was a roll call for the police in the early morning. The first killed and wounded policemen and as the ambulances came the second car exploded,” said Mussab Mohammad, a local resident who witnessed the attacks.
At least four people were killed and 41 others wounded near Kerbala, 80km southwest of Baghdad, when a car bomb exploded near a police station, a local health department spokesman said.
One man was killed and 12 people were wounded in simultaneous car and motorbike bombings in the centre of the northeastern Kurdish city of Kirkuk, police sources said.
In Al Wajehiya, another town in the Diyala province, a bomb in a parked car went off near a government building, killing one policeman and wounding 13, a police source said.—Reuters
