Bomb blasts kill 37 in Iraq, officials say

CNN Wire Service

BAGHDAD — A series of bomb blasts killed at least 37 people across Iraq on Tuesday, including 30 in an explosion at a vegetable market in Diwaniya, police officials said.

In that attack, some 99 miles (160 kilometers) south of Baghdad, a suicide bomber parked a truck packed with explosives concealed by watermelons and began calling shoppers to the truck. He then detonated the bomb, killing 30 and wounding 100, according to police.

The bombing in the largely Shiite city was among a series of attacks across Iraq, including a car-bomb attack in an outdoor market in Karbala, killing four people and wounding 30 others, according to Haider Jaber Jasim in the Karbala governor’s office.

Jasim had previously said 10 people died and 14 were wounded, but he said security officials had mistaken some unconscious victims for fatalities.

On Tuesday evening, a car bomb exploded along a busy road near the al-Nidda Sunni Mosque in northeastern Baghdad’s al-Qahira neighborhood, police officials said. One person died and five were wounded, according to police.

Earlier, eight roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in Taji, 12 miles (about 20 kilometers) north of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 14 others, police in Baghdad said.

The assailants were targeting an Iraqi police checkpoint in the Tuesday morning attack, police said.

In a western Baghdad neighborhood, a roadside bomb exploded, wounding three people.

Also in western Baghdad, gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by local Awakening Council members, wounding two of them, police said.

The Awakening Councils, also known as the Sons of Iraq, are made up predominantly of Sunni Arab fighters who battled Iraq’s al Qaeda militants after turning on them in late 2006.

More than 230 people were killed across the country in June, according to a CNN tally.

Despite the recent spate of attacks, violence has drastically dropped across the country since 2008. For example in January 2007, 1,990 civilians were killed across the country, according to Iraq’s Interior Ministry.