Forty-seven killed outside Baghdad as bombers target mosque, funeral procession.
At least 41 people have been killed and 57 wounded in two explosions outside a Sunni mosque in Baquba, 50 miles outside Baghdad, after Friday prayers. Six more people died as a suicide bomber reportedly hit a funeral procession southeast of the capital.
The Baquba blast killed 41 people was followed by a second explosion, which tore into crowds of people who were rushing to help victims of the first attack, police told Reuters. It is not yet clear if the police have revised this death toll to 47 or the joint casualty number.“I was about 30 meters from the first explosion. When the first exploded, I ran to help them, and the second one went off. I saw bodies flying and I had shrapnel in my neck,” Hashim Munjiz, a college student, told Reuters.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack but Sunni Islamist insurgents and Iraq’s Al-Qaeda wing the Islamic State of Iraq have stepped up attacks in order to provoke a wider sectarian confrontation.
Another blast was reported by Al Jazeera southeast of the capital where a suicide bomber hit a funeral procession, where at least 6 people were killed and at least 25 people wounded.
The news comes after eleven people were killed in series of bomb attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk – Iraq’s two major cities - on Thursday.In the Kirkuk attack, five people were killed after a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at the entrance to a Shiite mosque.
While in the suburb of Sadr city in Baghdad three people and killed and 17 injured. A further blast in Baghdad a car bomb blew up outside a market in the Chukook neighborhood, which killed one bystander.
Militant attacks on Sunni and Shiite mosques as well as against security forces and tribal leaders have mushroomed since security forces aided a Sunni protest camp in Kirkuk a month ago, fuelling fear that Iraq may slide back into all out-sectarian war.
Overall violence in Iraq has dropped since its peak in 2005-2007, but tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have remained high since the US led invasion of the country in 2003.
 |
| An Iraqi soldier inpects the remains of a vehicle at the scene of a car bomb explosion the previous days in Baghdad's Sadr City district on May 16, 2013. |
Iraq has grown more volatile since the start of the civil war two years ago in neighboring Syria, which has also pitted Sunnis against Shiites.
