A series of car bombs struck Baghdad yesterday, killing 22 people, police and medics said.
Car bombs exploded in three mainly Shi’ite districts, killing 15 people, the sources said, hours after a suicide car bombing killed seven people in another area of the capital.
The suicide bombing occurred at a police checkpoint in the Abu Dsheer district in southern Baghdad. The next three bombings took place within an hour of each other in the Bayaa district in southwestern Baghdad, in Kadhimiya in the northern part of the capital, and in the western district of Jihad.
Nine killed in multiple bus crash in Germany
Nine people were killed and more than 40 injured when several buses crashed into each other on a German motorway near the eastern city of Dresden, police said yesterday.
The accident occurred just before 2am when a Polish bus crashed into the back of a Ukrainian bus. The Polish bus then broke through the central barrier and collided with a Polish minibus travelling in the other direction.
The first bus then skidded down a slope.
Police said six of the nine dead had been identified. They were Polish citizens. Some of the 43 people injured were severely hurt, police said.
The A4 motorway, which links Germany with Poland via Dresden, was closed for hours in both directions.
Saudis investigate imams
Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Affairs Ministry is investigating 17 mosque imams in the capital Riyadh for not using their Friday sermons to denounce an al-Qaeda attack this month, the English daily Arab News reported yesterday.
The conservative Islamic kingdom has kept a close eye on mosque sermons for evidence of militancy since last decade, when al-Qaeda staged a series of attacks inside Saudi Arabia that killed hundreds.
The authorities are worried that anger at the violence in Syria and Iraq, coupled with hardline teachings by some local religious leaders could inspire a new generation of militants to again attack domestic targets.
Arab News cited Tawfiq al-Sudairi, an under-secretary at the Islamic Affairs Ministry, as saying the imams were under investigation “for allegedly failing to highlight the incident in their sermons”.