IRAQ:Four bombs killed at least 28 people and wounded scores in busy districts of Baghdad yesterday as Iraqis shopped and broke their fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
A car bomb exploded in a parking lot in central Baghdad's busy Karrada shopping district, followed quickly by a roadside bomb nearby. The double strike killed at least 15 people and wounded 55, police said.
A short time earlier a bomb exploded in a parked car in Baghdad's Shurta neighbourhood in the early evening, killing at least 12 people and wounding 35, police said. At about the same time another bomb attached to a car in the nearby Hay al-Amil neighbourhood killed one person.
US military officials say violence in Iraq is at four-year lows but some militant groups have stepped up attacks for the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims observe a daytime fast.
Streets crowded with Iraqis shopping for food before they break their fast have been a target for bombers. In Karrada, the streets were jammed with shoppers buying clothes and gifts ahead of a six-day public holiday beginning tomorrow to celebrate the end of the fasting month.
"The insurgents . . . to show there is no security in Baghdad," the Iraqi government's Baghdad security spokesman, Qassim Moussawi, said.
He said authorities expected militants to step up attacks in the capital, and that some were hard to stop, as bombs were being assembled inside the neighbourhoods they were targeting, instead of passing through police checkpoints. - (Reuters)