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.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
RSS