A wave of more than 30 attacks across Iraq killed 88 people and wounded more than 400 on Saturday and Sunday, security and medical sources said, with the security forces and markets among the targets. The latest violence brings the number of people killed already this month to 118, according to an AFP tally. While insurgents opposed to the Baghdad government are regarded as weaker than in past years, they are still capable of launching periodic mass-casualty attacks across the country. The latest assaults came as Iraq’s Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a leading Sunni, was sentenced in absentia on Sunday to hang for murder, although the carnage began hours before the sentence was handed down.
In the deadliest attack, two car bombs exploded in a market on Sunday near the Imam Ali al-Sharqi shrine in southern Iraq, a security official said. Dr Ali al-Alaa, a Maysan province health department official, said the blasts killed 14 people and wounded 60. Five car bombs exploded in predominantly Shiite areas of the Iraqi capital on Sunday night. In north Baghdad, a car bomb killed at least 13 people and wounded at least 32, while another in Shuala killed at least five and wounded 22, another in Urr killed four and wounded 13, and a fourth in Hurriyah killed three and wounded 14, an interior ministry official and a medical source said.