In the deadliest explosion Wednesday, a car bomb struck a police station near the offices of the governor in Kut, southeast of Baghdad. The attack killed 16 and wounded 18, according to Kut’s governor, Latif Turfa. In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle at a police station in the northeastern neighborhood of Qahira, killing at least 15 people, including six policemen, police said. The blast left another 60 people wounded.
Explosions disrupted the northeastern province of Diyala. At least three people were killed when a parked car blew up by the City Council in Moqdadiya in northeastern Diyala, according to police.
In Baquba, Diyala’s capital, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol, leaving one policeman and two civilians dead. Another 16 people were wounded in the blast. Insurgents also blew up the homes of three policemen and one electoral commission employee in Baquba’s outer district of Buhruz, according to police. Five people were wounded and the attackers planted the black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group for extremists, which includes Al Qaeda in Iraq, police added.
The strife also spread to Anbar province. The western region, once the symbol of the country’s Sunni insurgency, had quieted after 2007 due to a local revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq. But the last year has seen a return to violence. In the province’s capital Ramadi, a car bomb struck a bus station, killing two policemen and a civilian, police said. In Fallujah, the province’s other main city, a council member was killed when assailants planted a bomb on his car. A policeman also died when assailants blew up his car. Another three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded during their patrol. A bomb also killed an Iraqi soldier in the center of Fallujah, police said.
In the Shiite heartland, insurgents also caused mayhem. Militants struck in Basra, setting off a car bomb that left 11 people wounded. A car bomb attack in the southern pilgrimage city of Karbala by a police station left another 19 wounded, according to police and medical sources.
The attacks followed the announcement by the U.S. military on Tuesday that their troop numbers had now dropped to 49,700 soldiers as soldiers switched from a combat mission to the job of training the Iraqi army and police and assisting them when asked. Iraqis are concerned that the scaled-back American presence could help fuel violence.
