Wave of attacks in Iraq kills 42, leaves over 240 injured

Kirkuk (Iraq), Jan 16: Attacks in Baghdad and north Iraq killed 42 people today as hundreds attended the funeral of a Sunni MP who died in a suicide attack a day earlier, as a political crisis grips the country.

The violence struck mostly in disputed territory in the north and reportedly wounded at least 245 people. It comes as Iraq grapples with a long-running political dispute, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki facing several protests in hardening opposition against his rule and calls from many of his erstwhile government partners for his ouster.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks but Sunni militants often launch waves of violence in a bid to destabilise the government and push Iraq back towards the sectarian violence that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.

Wednesday's deadliest attack struck the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk, 240 kilometres north of Baghdad. Two car bombs in the same district killed at least 26 people and wounded 190, provincial health chief Sadiq Omar Rasul said. "Both explosions inflicted massive destruction," said police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader.

"Our forces are still trying to remove corpses from the rubble" of the first attack. That blast was detonated by a suicide attacker during the morning rush hour and appeared to target a compound housing local offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani.

A second car bomb parked on the side of a road nearby detonated shortly afterwards, apparently targeting a KDP official. Qader said six security force members were also killed and 10 wounded in the two blasts. Another suicide car bomb in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, also north of Baghdad, killed five people and wounded 40 others. It struck near the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

In Baghdad, five attacks left six people dead, officials said, while bombings and shootings in Baiji, Hawija and Tikrit, all north of the capital, killed five others.

AFP