Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

29 Iraqis Killed in Attacks on Saturday, 78 killed, 166 Injured on Sunday

October 6, 2013

 

Scene of Al-'Adhamiya neigborhood bombing, Baghdad, where 47 people were killed, 80 were injured, October 5, 2013 yeqen.	Scene of Al-Nida Mosque bombing, Baghdad, where one person was killed, 7 were injured, October 6, 2013 yeqen.

 

Scene of Tala'afar bombing, where 35 people were killed, 89 were injured, October 5, 2013 yeqen.

 

Suicide bomb attacks on Iraqi school, Shi'ite pilgrims, kill 29

By Ziad al-Sinjary

Sun Oct 6, 2013, 9:45am EDT

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) -

A suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the playground of a primary school in northern Iraq and blew himself up, killing 14 children and their headmaster on Sunday, police and medical sources said.

Another suicide bomber attacked a group of Shi'ite pilgrims on their way to visit a shrine in Baghdad, killing at least 14 people and wounding more than 30, some of them critically, police said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for either bombing, but the tactics used point to the Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, which views Shi'ites as non-believers and has been regaining momentum this year.

"Pools of blood, shoes and flesh are covering the ground," said a policeman at the scene of the blast in Baghdad, which came on the anniversary of the death of a Shi'ite imam. Women and children were among the victims, the policeman said.

More than 6,000 people have been killed across the country this year, according to monitoring group Iraq Body Count, reversing a decline in sectarian bloodshed that had reached a climax in 2006-07.

The attack at the primary school followed a suicide bombing minutes earlier on a police station in the same town, Tel Afar, about 70 km (45 miles) northwest of Mosul city, where Sunni Islamist and other insurgents have a foothold. There were no casualties in the police station attack.

The majority of Tel Afar's residents are from Iraq's Shi'ite Turkman minority, which in recent years has been the target of killings and kidnappings.

"The fingerprints of al Qaeda are clear on both attacks," said an official in the town who declined to be named.

Al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate was forced underground in 2007 after a joint offensive by U.S. troops and Sunni tribesmen.

But the group has re-emerged this year, invigorated by growing resentment towards Iraq's Shi'ite-led government, which the country's Sunni minority accuses of marginalizing their minority sect.

Sunnis launched street protests in December after Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sought the arrest of a senior Sunni politician. A bloody raid by security forces on a protest camp in April touched off a violent backlash by militants.

Relations between Islam's two main denominations have come under added strain from the conflict in Syria, which has drawn Sunnis and Shi'ites from Iraq and the wider Middle East into a sectarian proxy war.

Earlier this year, al Qaeda's Syrian and Iraqi wings merged to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has claimed responsibility for attacks on both sides of the border.

At least 60 people were killed on Saturday in two suicide bombings, one of which targeted Shi'ite pilgrims on their way to visit a shrine in Baghdad. Two Iraqi journalists were also shot dead by unidentified gunmen in central Mosul.

In a statement on Sunday, U.N. envoy to Iraq Nickolay Mladenov urged political, religious and civil leaders to work with the security forces to halt the surge in bloodshed.

"It is their responsibility to ensure that pilgrims can practice their religious duties, that school children can attend their classes, that journalists can exercise their professional duties, and that ordinary citizens can live a normal life, in an environment free of fear and violence," he said.

(Additional reporting by Kareem Raheem; writing by Isabel Coles; editing by Janet Lawrence and Tom Pfeiffer)

12 Shi'i pilgrim killed in suicide bomb attack in Baghdad 

BAGHDAD, Oct. 6, 2013 (Xinhua) --

Up to 12 Shi'i pilgrims were killed and 25 wounded in a suicide bomb attack in northern the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Sunday, an Interior Ministry source said.

The attack occurred in the afternoon when suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims in Seliekh district in the northern part of Baghdad, the source said.

The attack came as thousands of Shi'i pilgrims walk from Baghdad districts in processions to commemorate the death of Imam Mohammed al-Jawad, the ninth of the 12 most revered Shiite Imams, whose tomb located in the center of the old part of the holy Shiite Kadhimiya district.

Earlier, the source put the toll at one killed and seven wounded by a bomb attack on the pilgrims.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has said that almost 6,000 civilians were killed and over 14,000 others injured in Iraq from January to September this year.

78 killed, 166 wounded in attacks across Iraq

BAGHDAD, Oct. 5, 2013 (Xinhua) --

At least 78 people were killed and 166 others wounded in a wave of violent attacks across Iraq on Saturday, including a deadly suicide bombing targeting Shiite pilgrims in the capital city of Baghdad, the police and local media said.

At least 51 people were killed and 107 others wounded Saturday evening when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest near Shiite pilgrims in the Adhamiya area in northern Baghdad, a police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The pilgrims were on their way to the Al-Kadhimiya Mosque in the Kadhimiya neighborhood in northern Baghdad, he added.

Also on Saturday evening, at least 11 people were killed and 35 others wounded when a car bomb exploded near a popular cafe in the town of Balad, some 80 km north of Baghdad, another local police source told Xinhua.

One civilian was killed and 10 others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near another cafe in the Baya area in southwestern Baghdad, the police source said, adding that a policeman were killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb targeted police patrol in Mashahda, 30 km north of Baghdad.

In a separate attack, unidentified gunmen targeted a joint army and police checkpoint near Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, killing a soldier and a policeman on the spot and injuring three soldiers, police said.

In Iraq's northern city of Mosul, unidentified gunmen shot dead Mohammed Karim al-Badrani, a correspondent with al-Sharqiyah satellite channel, and his colleague Mohammed Ghanim, while they were interviewing local citizens in Sarj-Khana district in central Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, a local police source said.

The Iraqi Journalists Syndicate, which condemned in a statement the assassination of the two journalists, said in its annual report earlier that more than 375 media workers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Separately, a roadside bomb went off at a checkpoint manned by government-backed Sahawa paramilitary group fighters in the town of Yousifiyah, some 25 km south of Baghdad, killing three group fighters and wounding four others, a local police source said.

Elsewhere, gunmen in a car fired at a Sahwa leader and his bodyguards in Zab area the city of Hawijah, some 220 km north of Baghdad, killing three of his bodyguards and wounding the leader, a local police source told Xinhua.

The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after Sahwa's leaders became dismayed by al- Qaida's brutality and religious zealotry in the country.

Meanwhile, gunmen blew up bombs in three houses of policemen early Saturday in Amriyat al-Fallujah area, just south of the Fallujah city, killing two people and wounding four others, including a policeman, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua.

In a separate incident, gunmen in a car shot dead a civilian near his house in the southern part of Fallujah, the source said.

In Baghdad, a government employee was killed when a sticky bomb detonated in his car in Doura district in the southern part of the capital, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has said that almost 6,000 civilians were killed and over 14,000 others injured in Iraq from January to September this year.