At least 16 people died in and around Baghdad on Sunday in a series of 10 or more bomb attacks, international media report.
The New York Times cites an Iraqi security official as saying 18 people were killed and 77 wounded in 15 attacks, with the most deadly occurring in Taji, around 25 kilometers north of the capital. There, the official said, a suicide bomber targeted police responding to an earlier attack on a U.S. military patrol. Eight police and four bystanders were killed in the second bombing; the attack on the patrol resulted in no casualties.
Al Jazeera reported that seven police and three civilians were killed in the Taji attack.
The first blast in Baghdad hit a parking lot in the Shia Sadr City district in the east of the city. A car exploded, injuring five people.
A few minutes later in the same area of ??the city a bomb hidden in garbage exploded, killing one person died and wounding five others, and five minutes later a bomb hidden by a road went off, apparently aimed at a police patrol. Seven people were injured, including three policemen.
In addition, several explosions rocked the southwest of Baghdad, killing five people in total, including two police officers; 15 people were injured.
This was the second time in days that a series of explosions has targeted the security forces.
Twin bombs that appeared timed to lure policemen out of their fortified headquarters in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, killed at least 27 people and injured more than 52 on Thursday – most of them police officers. A third blast just 45 minutes later, on a road to a city hospital, brought the number of injured to at least 60.
MOSCOW, May 22 (RIA Novosti)