BAGHDAD: Bomb attacks targeting both Shia Muslims and Sunnis killed at least 20 people in Iraq yesterday.
In the ethnically mixed province of Diyala, a car bomb targeted Shias in a marketplace in the village of Anbakiya, killing five people in the third such attack of the past two months, police said.
“A white car parked near a barber’s shop inside Anbakiya market exploded. I got shrapnel in my head and my family took me to Baquba hospital,” said 24-year-old college student Ali Kadhim.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, but Sunni Islamist groups including Al Qaeda, which view Shias as non-believers, have been regaining momentum in Iraq, galvanised by civil war in neighbouring Syria.
Another car bomb targeted a Shia tribal leader, who survived while three others were killed, and a blast in Hwaish village, also in Diyala province, claimed three more lives.
A roadside bomb killed five people in a coffee shop in a Sunni area of Latifiya, around 40km from Baghdad, in a volatile area known as the “triangle of death”.
Gunmen killed six people in a house in Yousufiya, south of Baghdad, where a Sunni family were preparing the body of a man for burial, police said.
REUTERS
