Bombings kill fourteen in N Iraq

MOSUL - Reuters

Iraqi security inspect the scene of a car bomb attack in Baghdad yesterday. AP photo

A bomb in a parked car exploded outside a restaurant and a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest then struck a crowd of bystanders, killing 14 people in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar yesterday, police said.

Police said the final toll was 14 people killed and 23 wounded. Tal Afar, a mixed Sunni Arab-Turkmen city, is near the border with Syria, about 420 kilometers north of Baghdad and just west of the volatile northern city of Mosul. A local official in Tal Afar said: “A parked car bomb exploded near a restaurant in central Tal Afar. Minutes later, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the crowd.”

In a separate attack yesterday, a bomb hit a vehicle occupied by bodyguards of Iraq’s Housing and Construction Minister, Mohammed Saheb al-Daraji, in west-central Baghdad. Police said two people died and eight were wounded. The housing ministry said Daraji was in a convoy with the vehicle that was struck, but was unhurt. Police said the vehicle was not in a convoy and the minister was not near the scene. A separate bomb attached to a minibus in northern Baghdad killed two passengers.

The first weeks of February were largely quiet, but attacks have increased since then. On March 5, gunmen in apparently unauthorized uniforms of a special police squad carried out attacks on checkpoints and the homes of police officers in a town in Western Iraq, killing 27 people. On Feb. 23 attackers killed at least 60 people in strikes mainly on security targets in Shi’ite areas.