60 killed in Iraq
2005-11-18 14:18
Baghdad - About 55 worshippers have been killed in suicide attacks on two Shi'ite mosques northeast of Baghdad.
The Friday attacks occurred just hours after two car bombs exploded outside a hotel used by foreigners in the Iraqi capital.
The carnage comes as the United States military warned of rising violence in the run-up to elections next month.
About 62 people were wounded when two suicide bombers blew themselves up amid worshippers at the Shi'ite mosques in Khanaqin.
"Hospitals have received 55 dead and 62 injured," said Ibrahim Hasan al-Bajalan, Diyala provincial council leader.
"Two suicide bombers wearing explosives belts walked into the greater and smaller Khanaqin mosques and blew themselves up," said al-Bajalan.
Authorities have imposed a curfew in the majority Shi'ite Kurdish town near the Iranian border, 170 kilometres from the capital.
Hours earlier six people were killed, including a woman and two children, and 40 hurt, when two suicide bombers blew up cars outside the Hamra hotel in southern Baghdad's Jadriyah district.
Rescuers scramble through the rubble
The Hamra is one of several hotels housing foreign journalists. It is near an interior ministry complex where United States soldiers discovered a number of abused Iraqi prisoners on Sunday.
The explosions brought down the facade of a three-storey residential building, and sent slabs of concrete flying, wounding many people as they slept.
Two Turks and a Sudanese are among those hurt.
Firemen and soldiers, assisted by local people, scrambled through the rubble, searching for survivors.
Authorities are unsure if the interior ministry complex was damaged in the blast.
It had housed 170 detainees, mostly Sunnis. They were taken away by US soldiers on Sunday. The soldiers said the prisoners were in need of food, water and medical attention after some had been abused.
Elsewhere in Iraq, four civilians were wounded when a car bomb exploded on Friday near a convoy of 4x4s in Kanaan, near Baquba, northwest of Baghdad.
The US military has reported the death of a US soldier in a road crash near the northwestern town of Tal Afar, the 13th American serviceman to die in the country in three days.
The US military believes the level of violence will increase in the run-up to the December 15 general election.