‘Qaeda’ attacks kill 39, wound over 250 in Iraq

A wave of attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda killed at least 39 people yesterday, in what Iraq’s Parliament speaker said was an attempt to derail an Arab League summit planned for the end of March.

Security officials said over 250 people were wounded in the attacks, which hit six different provinces, and came days after a suicide blast near a Baghdad police academy.

“The terrorist Al-Qaeda organisation is trying to send messages to its supporters that it is still operating on Iraqi soil, and that it has the capability to strike in the capital and the cities and both big and small regions,” said a statement on the interior ministry’s website.

Attacks occurred in religiously mixed Baghdad in central Iraq and Babil to its south, and in Sunni-majority Diyala, Salaheddin, and Nineveh provinces north of the capital. Violence also hit Kirkuk.

At least 16 car bombs and eight roadside bombs exploded, in addition to several shootings and a mortar attack. It was Iraq’s deadliest day since January 14, when 53 people were killed in a suicide bombing outside the southern port of Basra.Parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi said the attacks aimed to derail the Arab League summit in Baghdad at the end of next month and a planned national conference aimed at political reconciliation.

A car bomb in the Shiite shrine district of Kadhimiyah killed six people and wounded 15 while gunmen attacked a police checkpoint across the Tigris River in Adhamiyah, killing six and wounding three. Another car bomb exploded in the central Karrada district near a police checkpoint, killing one person and wounding 11, followed by another that killed one and wounded six. Two roadside bombs and an attack by gunmen on a police checkpoint killed two people and wounded nine in the southwest of the city. Other attacks in south Baghdad killed four and wounded 20, and a car bomb in Mansur in the capital’s west killed two and wounded five. A roadside bomb wounded five people in Taji. In Diyala province, also north of the capital, two car bombs in the provincial capital of Baquba killed three people and wounded eight, while a roadside bomb killed one, a police major said. Gunmen killed two people and wounded a third west of Baquba, and a roadside bomb east of the city wounded a man and his wife.

Eight people were killed and 56 wounded in attacks in the province. In Babil, a car bomb killed one person and wounded five in provincial capital Hilla, police said.

Another car bomb exploded near a restaurant in Al-Mussayeb, killing a girl of around 10 and wounding 85 other people, most of them primary school pupils, a hospital official said. A roadside bomb in Al-Nil, north of Hilla, wounded seven people, including three police, police said. Two car bombs targeting police in the northern oil hub of Kirkuk wounded 25 people, security and medical sources said. In Mosul a mortar attack killed one man.­

The US embassy said in a statement that it “strongly condemns the terrorist attacks that targeted innocent men, women, and children.