Iraq violence leaves at least 36 dead, mostly Shiite Muslims

A vehicle damaged by a bomb in Dujail, Iraq, on Thursday. On Friday, a Shia merchant, his wife and his mother were killed in the town. Photograph

BAGHDAD (Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - A suicide bomber killed at least 25 people in Baghdad yesterday while many people died in other attacks, as security forces seek to stem spiralling violence with anti-insurgent operations.

Yesterday’s violence struck across the country — in Baghdad and its north and south — with gun and bomb attacks hitting Shia and Sunni areas. A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged belt at a park in a crowded area of north Baghdad, killing at least 26 people and wounding at least 55.

Earlier in the day, police said gunmen broke into a house of a Shia merchant at dawn on Friday in the northern town of Dujail, killing him, his wife and elderly mother. Authorities said the motive behind that attack wasn't immediately unclear. Dujail, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, is a Shia Muslim town surrounded by Sunni areas, while violence in Hilla, south of the capital and predominantly Shia, left two dead. A half-dozen other shootings and explosions in Baghdad and in Mosul, a mostly Sunni Arab city in north Iraq, killed two people and wounded 12. 

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