At least 23 people were killed and some 90 others wounded in a string of nine car bomb attacks targeting security forces in and around Baghdad early Friday, an interior ministry official said.
Deadly explosions also struck the Kurdish northern city of Arbil and the southern Shiite city of Basra.
The attacks came a day after parliament voted in the new government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, with several seats left vacant.
PHOTO: AP
Thirteen people died, including seven soldiers and two policemen, and 50 were wounded, including 13 soldiers and two policemen, in four apparently coordinated car bomb attacks in two districts of the capital at about 8am, the official said.
At least some of the cars were believed to have been driven by suicide drivers.
A photographer saw the remains of one hand, believed to belong to a bomber, chained to the steering wheel of a burned out car.
Nine died, including four policeman and three interior ministry commandos, and 35, mostly civilians, were wounded when three more car bombs exploded in Madain, a town some 30km south of the capital that was swept only 10 days ago by the Iraqi army in search of insurgents.
An Iraqi soldier was killed and three injured by an eighth car bomb, which exploded next to an army convoy in an eastern district of the capital at around 10:30am, security officials said.
The latest surge of attacks started around 7:30am when a bomb exploded just after a US convoy had driven by in the southern Dura district. There were no reported casualties.
A 10-year-old girl was wounded shortly afterwards when a mortar shell hit her home in the southern Dura district.
Dozens of explosions then rocked the city around 8am, as car bombs targetted Iraqi police and army in the northern district of Adhamiyah and insurgents fired mortar shells into the area adding to the chaos.
Two more cars blew up near police targets in the eastern district of Saligh leaving scenes of widespread destruction.
In Madain at around the same time, a car bomb ploughed into a police vehicle at the entrance to the town. A second car bomb detonated outside a communications center and a third blew up near the local hospital.
Also Friday, a bomb disposal expert was killed and a civilian injured by an explosion in the Kurdish city of Arbil, local police chief Fahrad Karim said.
And in Basra, one border guard was killed and two injured by a bomb, hospital sources said.
The US military, meanwhile, said an American soldier was killed and five others were wounded in a bomb explosion early Thursday near former president Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image