Suicide attackers and car bombs that hit cities across Iraq today killed at least 60 people in apparently co-ordinated assaults authorities blamed on al-Qaeda affiliates intent on destabilising the government.
The attacks punctured the recent calm of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and underscored the continued fragility of Iraq's security as US troops prepare to leave more than eight years after the invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
In the worst assault, a roadside bomb followed by a car bomb targeting police killed at least 37 people in Kut, a mainly Shia Muslim city 150km southeast of the capital Baghdad, police said.
The blasts shattered facades of shops and homes in Kut. Firefighters picked through wreckage and blood was spattered across the street near the crumpled remains of the car bomb.
A director of the local provincial health department, said more than 68 people were wounded in the Kut blasts and doctors in the city's main hospital said they were struggling to treat casualties, many with severe burns.
"These attacks . . . are trying to influence the security situation and undermine confidence in the security forces," said Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Baghdad security operations, blaming al Qaeda-linked groups.
Kut had been relatively quiet since August last year when a suicide bomber killed 30 policemen and destroyed a police station as the U.S. military ended combat operations in Iraq.
Dozens more were killed or wounded in other cities north and south of the capital. At least eight people were killed and 14 wounded when a suicide car bomber attacked a municipality building in Khan Bani Saad, about 30km northeast of Baghdad, in the province of Diyala.
Two suicide bombers attacked an Iraqi counter-terrorism unit in Tikrit, 150km north of Baghdad, killing at least two policemen and wounding six in a failed attempt to free al-Qaeda prisoners, a police official said.
One attacker detonated his suicide vest hoping to kill a high-ranking counter-terrorism officer, and the other was shot dead during the attack, said an officer with the Tikrit counter terrorism unit.
In the southern holy Shia city of Najaf, at least six people were killed and up to 79 more wounded when two car bombs exploded, health authorities said. Police said the bombs targeted a police building.
Elsewhere, at least four people were killed and 41 others wounded near Kerbala, 80km southwest of Baghdad, when a car bomb exploded near a police station, a local health department spokesman said.
One man was killed and 12 people were wounded in simultaneous car and motorbike bombings in the centre of the northeastern city of Kirkuk, police sources said. In al-Wajehiya, another town in Diyala province, a bomb in a parked car went off near a government building, killing one policeman and wounding 13.
Iraq's violence has subsided since the height of sectarian slaughter in 2006-07 but militants are testing local security forces just as Baghdad and Washington debate whether US troops should stay past a year-end deadline for withdrawal.
The al Qaeda affiliate the Islamist State of Iraq has been weakened by the loss of top commanders, and Iraq says its security forces can handle internal threats. But Sunni Muslim Islamists and Shia militia are still capable of carrying out devastating attacks.
US soldiers are scheduled to leave by the end of the year. But Iraqi and US officials are discussing whether some stay on as trainers after 2011 to help local armed forces fill in capability gaps. Baghdad says it needs training to build up its conventional air force and navy. But talks to keep American troops on past the year-end withdrawal date could be complicated over the sensitive issue of immunity for US soldiers on Iraqi soil.
Reuters