Nearly 30 killed, scores injured in Iraq attacks

Nearly 30 people have been killed and scores of others wounded in a series of attacks in and around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

In an attack in the north of Baghdad, unidentified gunmen killed five off-duty army officers after stopping their cars in the area.

Militants detonated a car bomb during rush hour in the city’s commercial district of Karrada, killing seven people, including three police officers, and injuring 21 others.

In a separate bomb attack at the main gate of an office affiliated with Iraq’s Higher Education Ministry in the capital, four people, including two police officers, were killed and 12 others were wounded.

Elsewhere, in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, a car bomb went off near an outdoor market, claiming the lives of eight people and injuring 17 others.

Militants also stormed the house of an anti-al-Qaida Sunni fighter in the town of Yusufiyah, killing him and four members of his family.

Iraq is currently witnessing a wave of violence unprecedented in recent years.

Official figures show that more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed and nearly 1,400 others injured in violent attacks across Iraq in April. According to the United Nations, almost 9,000 people were killed in 2013.

Takfiri groups, including the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), are reportedly coming to Iraq from neighboring Syria and Saudi Arabia to undermine security in the country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said Saudi Arabia and Qatar are responsible for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing the Al Saud regime as a major supporter of global terrorism.