Bombs target Iraqi Shi’ites and Sunnis, at least 20 martyred
Bomb attacks targeting both Shi’ite Muslims and Sunnis killed at least 20 people in Iraq on Tuesday.
In Diyala, a car bomb targeted Shi’ites in a marketplace in the village of Anbakiya, killing five people in the third such attack of the past two months, police said.
“A white car parked near a barber’s shop inside Anbakiya market exploded. I got shrapnel in my head and my family took me to Baquba hospital,” said 24-year-old college student Ali Kadhim.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, but extremist Salafi groups including al Qaeda, which view Shi’ites as non-believers, have been regaining momentum in Iraq, galvanized by civil war in neighboring Syria.
Another car bomb targeted a Shi’ite tribal leader, who survived while three others were killed, and a blast in Hwaish village, also in Diyala province, claimed three more lives.
A roadside bomb killed five people in a coffee shop in a Sunni area of Latifiya, around 40 km (25 miles) from Baghdad, in a volatile area known as the “triangle of death”, where 16 members of one Shi’ite family were slain last week.
Gunmen killed six people in a house in Yousufiya, south of Baghdad, where a Sunni family were preparing the body of a man for burial, police said.
Some 800 Iraqis were killed in acts of violence in August, according to the United Nations.