Baghdad: Twenty-one people were killed in a spate of bomb attacks across Iraq on Tuesday, one of the deadliest days of violence in the country since US troops left its cities three weeks ago.
More than 120 people were wounded in the attacks in Baghdad, Baquba to its north and Ramadi to its west, just a day after seven police officers and a soldier died.
In the deadliest single attack, five people were killed and 21 wounded by a bomb attack in the northeast Baghdad neighbourhood of Husseiniyah, security officials said.
The attack took place at around 8:15 pm (1715 GMT) in a popular market in the district.
In nearby Sadr City, a one-year-old baby and a girl of eight were among four people who died when a bomb exploded in a market, police and the Defence Ministry said. Thirty-four people were wounded.
Police defused another bomb in the same market.
Another four people, all workers, were killed and 31 wounded in an earlier twin bomb attack in Sadr City, a sprawling, overwhelmingly Shiite neighbourhood.
Two people lost their lives and six were wounded in a car bombing in the south Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora, while a company manager was killed by a sticky bomb in Taji, on the northern outskirts of the capital.
Water Resources Minister Abdel Latif Jamal Rashid narrowly escaped a bombing as his convoy drove through the central commercial district of Karrada, security sources said. His ministry denied Rashid was the target.
Six passers-by were wounded when the bombs exploded near a bridge.
Twelve members of the same family were wounded when the minibus they were travelling in was struck by a roadside bomb in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Baab al-Muadham.
They were taking the body of a dead relative from the mortuary to his burial when the minibus was hit.
In Baquba, a woman and her son were killed when the vegetable cart they were pushing struck a roadside bomb.
And in a second day of deadly attacks in the western city of Ramadi, three people were killed and 10 wounded in a double car bombing outside a restaurant, hospital officials and police said.
On Monday, 10 people died, including seven policemen and a soldier, in attacks in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, once a bastion of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, and in the main northern city of Mosul.
Anbar had seen a sharp drop-off in violence over the past 18 months as local tribes allied themselves with US-led forces against al Qaeda and it foreign fighters.
But last week six people died in a suicide bombing near a mosque in Ramadi.
The latest attacks come just three weeks after US troops withdrew from urban centres in line with a security pact between Baghdad and Washington that calls for American forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
Violence has dropped markedly throughout the country in recent months, but attacks increased in the run-up to the US military pullback, with 437 Iraqis killed in June -- the highest death toll in 11 months.
Attacks remain common in Baghdad and Mosul.
Bureau Report
