A wave of attacks across Iraq on Thursday killed at least 20 people, officials said, amid warnings of a potential escalation in violence to coincide with the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Officials reported more than a dozen explosions and shootings in 10 cities and towns nationwide that also left more than 100 people wounded, and which came a day after attacks killed 13 people.
The latest unrest takes the overall death toll from violence this month to 165, according to an AFP tally based on security and medical sources.
In the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Husseiniyah, a car bomb killed at least six people and wounded 26, according to an interior ministry official and a medical source.
Meanwhile in the town of Daquq, north of Baghdad in Kirkuk province, a suicide attacker blew himself up at an anti-terrorism department’s compound, according to provincial police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader.
In the province’s eponymous capital, meanwhile, at least four car bombs were set off across the city — including two at the offices of the state-owned North Oil Company.
“I came to investigate one of the attacks near the company compound,” said police Colonel Abdullah Kadhim, head of Kirkuk city’s sniffer dog unit.
“Suddenly, another bomb went off near me, and it damaged lots of cars and company property inside the parking lot.” Kadhim suffered wounds to his leg.
Provincial health chief Sadiq Omar Rasul put the toll from the attacks in Daquq and Kirkuk city at eight dead and 56 wounded. Qader said the victims included six police killed in the Daquq attack.
The violence in ethnically-mixed Kirkuk city was concentrated in its Kurdish-majority areas, and came on the anniversary of the founding of Iraq’s most powerful Kurdish party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
The KDP’s current leader Massud Barzani was also born on the same day his father founded the party. In the same province, two roadside bombs near the home of a police captain in the town of Dibis killed his brother and wounded four others, including the captain himself, police and a doctor at nearby Kirkuk hospital said. Attacks also struck Al-Garma, Tuz Khurmatu, Mosul, Taji, Khales and Baquba, leaving five dead and dozens wounded.
In Al-Garma, near the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah west of Baghdad, four policemen were killed and three others wounded in a shooting at a checkpoint, according to police Major Enes Mahmud and Dr Omar Dalli at Fallujah hospital. As emergency responders and civilians rushed to the scene, a roadside bomb exploded, wounding three others.
Three roadside bombs exploded in Tuz Khurmatu near the home of a district chief, or mukhtar, killing his wife and leaving him and his three sons wounded, according to police and a local medic. Explosions in Mosul, Taji, Khales and on the outskirts of Baquba left 22 others wounded, security and medical officials said.
