BAGHDAD: At least 59 persons were killed and scores injured in a series of car bombings and other attacks in south and central Iraq, mostly targeting Shia majority-cities, security and hospital sources said on Sunday.
The sources said that two separate car bombings occurred in an outdoor market in the city of Hillah, 95 kilometers south of Baghdad, killing at least 21 persons and injuring 29 others.
Another car bombing occurred in a parking lot in the nearby city of Iskandariyah, killing four civilians and injuring nine others. Likewise, five persons were killed and 25 injured when a car bomb struck an industrial area in the holy city of Karbala, 80 kilometers south of Baghdad.
Similarly, a car bomb targeted a construction site and food stalls in Kut, a city 160 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, killing at least two persons and injuring 14 others. Four separate car bombings killed seven people and injured 31 others in the towns of Suwayrah and Hafriyah located outside Kut.
A car bomb targeting a convoy of the head of Baghdad’s provincial council went off in northern Azamiyah neighborhood of Iraqi capital. At least three persons were killed and eight others injured in the incident.
In another violent incident, two more car bomb attacks struck the southern cities of Basra and Nasiriyah, killing eight civilians and wounding 26 people. Likewise, in Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib, a bomb hit a police patrol, leaving two civilians dead and nine other people wounded.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Sunday attacks, but Iraqi security officials say the main suspects are militants linked to al-Qaeda because they conduct systematically organized waves of bombings to undermine the government.
