Baghdad: Iraqi officials say a series of attacks in several cities across the country have killed 22 people.
Most of the deadly attacks this morning reported by police officials were bombings, which killed 21 people in Baghdad, in the western city of Fallujah, the contested northern city of Kirkuk and towns south of the capital. Another 100 people were wounded.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but coordinated attacks are a favourite tactic of al-Qaeda`s Iraq branch.
Iraqi officials believe the insurgent group is growing stronger and increasingly coordinating with allies fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad across the border.
They say rising lawlessness on the Syria-Iraq frontier and cross-border cooperation with a Syrian group, the Nusra Front, has improved the militants` supply of weapons and foreign fighters.
Nearly all of the deadly attacks reported by police officials were bombings.
They were unusually broad in scope, striking not just Baghdad but also the western Sunni city of Fallujah, the ethnically contested oil-rich city of Kirkuk and towns in the predominantly Shiite south.
Other attacks struck north of the capital, including the former al-Qaeda stronghold of Baqouba and Saddam Hussein`s hometown of Tikrit.
Windows rattled from the force of a blast in central Baghdad when a bomb struck the central commercial district of Karrada.
In another of the Baghdad explosions, a parked car bomb exploded in a bus station in the eastern suburbs of Kamaliya, killing four.
PTI
