BAGHDAD – A wave of bombings and shootings in Iraq Sunday killed at least 32 people and wounded 104, security and medical officials said. The violence was centered in Baghdad and the surrounding areas of Taji, Madain and Tarmiyah. The deadliest attack came in the town of Taji, a former Al-Qaeda stronghold just north of Baghdad, where three explosive-rigged cars went off within minutes of each other. Police said eight people died and 28 were injured in the back-to-back blasts that began around 7:15 a.m. Shortly after the Taji attacks, police said a suicide bomber set off his explosives-packed car in the Shiite neighborhood of Shula in northwest Baghdad. One person was killed and seven wounded. “So many people were hurt. A leg of a person was amputated,” lamented Shula resident Naeem Frieh. Within an hour, another suicide bomber drove a minibus into a security checkpoint in Kut, located 160 km southeast of Baghdad. Three police officers were killed and five wounded, Maj. Gen. Hussein Abdul-Hadi Mahbob said. And in Iraq's north, another policeman was killed when security forces were trying to defuse a car bomb parked on the main highway between the cities of Kirkuk and Tuz Khormato, said Kirkuk police chief Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir. A second policeman was wounded in the blast, Qadir said. Kirkuk is about 290 km north of Baghdad. At around 10:30 a.m., another parked car bomb went off next to a bus carrying Iranians in the town of Madain, killing three Iraqis and injuring 11 others included seven Iranians, another police officer and health official said. In the town of Balad Ruz, 75 km northeast of Baghdad, a parked car bomb targeted a passing police patrol, killing two policemen and injuring seven others, a police officer and health official said. – Agencies
