How to model a car that exploded in Iraq
The worst attack occurred in Kut, a predominantly Shiite city 150 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, a roadside bomb followed by a car bomb has killed 37 people, police and hospital sources said.
Dhiyauddin Khalil, director of the provincial health department, said that more than 68 people were injured in the bombings that targeted the police. Many of the wounded have serious burns.
“These attacks (…) are trying to influence the security situation and undermine confidence in the security forces,” he considered General Qassim al Musawi, a spokesman for security operations in Baghdad, blaming groups linked to Al Qaeda.
Violence in Iraq has sent dramatically since its peak in 2006-2007, but the militants are testing increasingly to local security forces as the last U.S. troops are scheduled to leave the country later this year. Kut had been relatively quiet since August last year when a suicide bomber killed 30 policemen and destroyed a police station.
Moreover, at least eight people were killed and fourteen wounded when a suicide bomber aboard a car bomb attacked a municipal building in Khan Bani Saad, about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province, according police said.
Meanwhile, two suicide bombers attacked an Iraqi anti-terrorist unit in Tikrit, 150 kilometers north of Baghdad, killing at least two policemen and wounding six others in an unsuccessful attempt to free prisoners from Al Qaeda, according to a police officer.
One of the terrorists detonated his explosives vest in the hope of killing a senior officer of the fight against terrorism while the other was killed during the attack, according to Capt. Jassim al Jibouri, the unit attacked.
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf in the south, at least three people were killed and 19 wounded by exploding two car bombs, officials said. Police Capt. Hadi al-Najafi has stated that the target was a police building.
Meanwhile, another man has died and twelve more have been wounded by the simultaneous explosion of a car and a motorcycle in the center of the city of Kirkuk in the north-east, police said.