Series of attacks kill 34 in Iraq
AP, Baghdad
Three suicide car bombings struck within an hour and two parked motorcycles exploded in northern Iraq yesterday, while gunmen in speeding cars opened fire on a crowded market in Baghdad in a series of attacks that killed at least 34 people. Continuing violence during the past days also has claimed the lives of three children, a US soldier and a Sunni Muslim cleric, underscoring the rampant, random nature of an insurgency that has killed almost 800 people since the April 28 announcement of Iraq's new Shia-led government, according to an Associated Press count. Twenty people were killed as a wide swath of northern Iraq was hit by three suicide bombings within an hour. A suicide bomber struck a restaurant in Tuz Khormato, 80km south of the northern city of Kirkuk, during breakfast hours Thursday, killing at least 12 people, including a bodyguard of a deputy prime minister, and wounding 40, according to the Iraqi Defence Ministry and police. The blast set ablaze eight cars in the restaurant's parking lot, the focal point of a bloody, rubble-strewn scene that US and Iraqi police quickly cordoned off. Shards of glass, shoes and splattered breakfast meals covered the restaurant's floor as emergency workers raced around overturned tables and wooden chairs in a bid to treat the casualties. Earlier in Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber targeting a convoy of Toyota Land Cruisers carrying civilian contractors killed four Iraqi bystanders and wounded at least 11 others, said Dr. Bassam Mohammed of Kirkuk Emergency Hospital. None of the occupants in the convoy was injured, although one vehicle was damaged, the US military said. Another suicide bomber killed four people and wounded four in Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police Col. Mudhafar Mohammed said. The victims included Hussein Alwan al-Tamimi, 41, deputy head of Iraq's northeastern Diyala provincial council since January, and three of his bodyguards. Hours later, two parked motorcycles rigged with explosives detonated near a coffee shop frequented by policemen, killing five Iraqis, wounding 13 and destroying several shops in Mosul, police and hospital officials said. Gunmen firing randomly from three speeding cars also killed nine Iraqis in a crowded market area in Baghdad, a Defence Ministry official said.
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