12 killed in wave of Iraq attacks
2012-12-31 17:05
Baghdad - A wave of bombings and shootings killed 12
people on Monday as Iraq grappled with anti-government protests and simmering
political crises ahead of major Shi’ite Muslim commemoration rituals.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the
attacks in eight towns and cities that also wounded more than 40, but Sunni
militants such as Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq regularly target officials in
a bid to destabilise the government.
They also regularly attack Shi’ite pilgrims.
The violence comes after anti-government protesters
blocked a key highway to Syria and Jordan, amid political tensions between Shi’ite
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and a secular Sunni-backed party in his fragile
national unity government.
In the deadliest attack, seven people - three women, two
children and two men - were killed when three houses were blown up in the town
of Mussayib south of Baghdad, a local police officer and a medic said. Four
others were wounded.
The victims were apparently targeted because they were
Shi’ites, the officials said.
Their deaths come just days before Arbaeen commemorations
marking 40 days after the Ashura anniversary commemorating the slaying of Imam
Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures, by the armies of the
caliph Yazid in 680AD.
A series of attacks in restive Diyala province, north of
Baghdad, wounded 19 people, including 10 Shi’ite pilgrims who were on the
traditional walk to the holy shrine city of Karbala to mark Arbaeen.
In the north, three policemen were killed and four
critically wounded in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk when a bomb went off
nearby as they were trying to defuse explosives, a police officer and a doctor
at the city's hospital said.
Four separate bombings in Kirkuk city and nearby towns,
three of them targeting police and soldiers, wounded four people.
Car bomb
Meanwhile, a car bomb parked outside government offices
south of Baghdad as the provincial governor was arriving killed two people.
"I saw a huge fire and heard a loud explosion,"
said Kadhim Jawad, who was at the scene of the attacks.
"I saw shops near the explosion were badly damaged
and there was a man lying on the street. He was covered in blood."
The blast in the city of Hilla also wounded 19 people,
including a guard for the governor of Babil province and one of his
photographers, a policeman and a medic said. The governor himself was unharmed.
The explosion also badly damaged shops and cars.
The latest attacks come amid prolonged anti-government
demonstrations in mostly Sunni areas over the alleged targeting of their
minority community by the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad, sparked by the
arrest of at least nine of Finance Minister Rafa al-Essawi's guards on
terrorism charges.
Essawi, a senior member of the Iraqiya bloc that is part
of Maliki's unity government but frequently criticises him in public, has
called for the premier to resign, further heightening tensions between the two
sides.
Violence in Iraq is down from its peak in 2006 and 2007,
but attacks still occur almost every day across the country.
