At least 23 people were killed and dozens wounded in a series of attacks targeting Sunni areas across northern Iraq on Thursday.
A car bomb ripped through a fruit and vegetable market north of Baghdad on Thursday evening killing at least 16 people, as shoppers searched for reduced goods, officials said.
Another 27 people were wounded in the evening blast in the predominantly Sunni Arab city of Samarra, about 100 km (63 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
In Baghdad, gunmen shot dead three men outside their house in Saydiya, a mixed Sunni-Shiite area on the city’s southwest side. And in al-Adil, a Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a group of people in a residential area and killed two people, police said.
In Mosul, a car bomb exploded outside a local hospital and killed two people. Nine other people were wounded in this explosion. Mosul is a largely Sunni city about 360 km (224 miles) north of Baghdad.
Police officials in those cities spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to release information to media.
Thursday’s violence comes a day after at least 75 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a wave of shootings and bombings across Iraq, including a spate of bombings in Baghdad.
