Spate of Attacks in Iraq Martyrs at Least 60, Wounds Hundreds

Attacks on Iraqis martyred at least 60 people across the country on Thursday, including a suicide truck bomb targeting members of the country’s Shabak minority, police and medics said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for any of the attacks.
In details, 10 bombs exploded in districts of the Iraqi capital late on, martyring 44 people in all, police and medics said. One blast occurred near an amusement park north of Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, martyring six children.

Another bomber, wearing police uniform, detonated an explosives belt in a cafe in the town of Tuz Khurmatu further south, killing four people and wounding 27.
Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber driving a truck packed with explosives blew himself up in a village in the northern province of Nineveh, killing at least 15 Shabaks.
The village of Mwafaqiya, where the bomber struck, is home to many Shabak families who used to live in the provincial capital Mosul but fled the city after being threatened by militant groups.
“At 6 am this morning, a suicide truck bomber detonated himself amid the houses of my village,” said Qusay Abbas, a former Shabak representative in the Mosul provincial council. “There are still some people under the debris of their houses.”

Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate was forced underground in 2007 but has since regrouped and earlier this year merged with its Syrian counterpart to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. That group has claimed responsibility for attacks on both sides of the border.
Last month, at least 21 people were killed in a suicide bombing at a Shabak funeral in Nineveh, which lies just outside the boundary of the relatively secure and autonomous Kurdistan region.
“The recent rise in violence in Nineveh province calls for urgent action and strengthened security cooperation between the government of Iraq, the Nineveh provincial authorities and the Kurdish Regional Government,” the UN envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said in a statement condemning the attack.

With the latest violence, more than 380 people have been killed so far this month, and over 5,050 since the beginning of the year, according to Agence France Presse figures based on security and medical sources.