At least 28 people were killed, including women and schoolgirls, and dozens wounded in a triple bombing in a Baghdad market on Monday, the deadliest attack to rock the Iraqi capital in months, security officials said.
The attackers detonated a car bomb in the Sunni district of Adhamiyah, then minutes later a suicide bomber ran into the resulting melee and blew up, according to defence and interior ministry officials.
A third explosion caused by a roadside bomb around 30 metres (yards) from the first two blasts tore through the market moments later, according to an Iraqi police officer who was on the street when the attack took place.
ZAGREB (AFP) — Croatia’s top security body was to meet on Friday after a senior journalist was murdered in a car bomb attack as Prime Minister Ivo Sanader vowed he would not allow the country to turn into “another Beirut”.
Ivo Pukanic, founder and owner of the Nacional independent weekly, was killed outside his paper’s offices in downtown Zagreb on Thursday night in the third mafia-style killing in the capital since the beginning of the month.
The blast also claimed the life of his marketing director Niko Franjic, while two other people were also injured in the explosion.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — A car bomb exploded Friday in an outdoor market in southern Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians and wounding 22, an Interior Ministry official said.
Women and children were among the casualties from the explosion in the Shiite enclave in the Dora neighborhood, the official said.
In a separate incident Friday, an improvised explosive device killed four Iraqis and wounded 18 during an attack against an Iraqi Police mounted patrol in Mosul, north of Baghdad, according to a written statement from the Multi-National Division-North. Two Iraqi policemen were wounded.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - A suicide blast at an anti-Taliban tribal meeting in a restive Pakistani region bordering Afghanistan on Friday killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens, security officials said.
The explosion happened a day after a force of pro-government tribesmen destroyed two militant hideouts in the Orakzai district, one of Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal regions, they said.
Eleven people have been killed during a American raid in the Iraqi city of Mosul in which a suicide bomber blew himself up, the US military says.
Three women and three children were among the dead at the private home, the US military said, adding that five “terrorists” had also died.
However, an official at a local morgue told the BBC most of the dead showed signs of bullet wounds.
Elsewhere in Mosul, four people were killed when gunmen attacked a funeral.
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — A car exploded Friday, killing seven soldiers outside Russia’s military headquarters in South Ossetia, and Russian authorities charged it was a terrorist bombing meant to wreck the tense cease-fire that ended their war with Georgia.
Georgia’s Interior Ministry blamed Russia, accusing it of arranging the blast to provide a pretext for delaying next week’s scheduled withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgian territory around South Ossetia and another Kremlin-backed separatist region, Abkhazia.
BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers struck two Shiite mosques in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 24 people and wounding dozens during celebrations marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
To the north, suspected Shiite militiamen gunned down six members of a Sunni family, including women and children, police reported.
Those attacks occurred four days after a series of explosions killed 32 people and wounded nearly 100 in Shiite areas of Baghdad, raising fears that al-Qaida in Iraq is trying to provoke Sunni-Shiite reprisal killings now that the last of the American “surge” troops have left the country.
COLOMBO (AFP) - One civilian was injured in an explosion in the heart of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo on Monday, police said.
Police said one woman had minor injuries, while six vehicles were badly damaged in the explosion that took place in Colombo’s commercial Fort area.
The cause of the blast was not immediately clear.
Eyewitnesses said the explosion came from a van parked along the busy lane crammed with pavement hawkers and shops.
ALGIERS (AFP) - Three people were killed and six others were wounded in a suicide attack near the Algerian capital, APS news agency quoted security officials as saying on Monday.
The bomber blew up his car packed with explosives near the town of Dellys, about 40 kilometres (20 miles) east of Algiers, late Sunday at the end of the daily Ramadan fast.
APS did not indicate who might have been targeted in the attack.
The lives of those injured were not in danger, the report said.
BAGHDAD — Five bomb attacks struck Baghdad on Sunday, three of them aimed at civilians who were out holiday shopping and strolling. Security sources said at least 27 people had been killed and 84 wounded.
The bombings reinforced fears among a growing number of residents that the security situation in Baghdad was deteriorating, even though over all it remained at the most stable level since the American-led invasion in 2003, according to data measured by the United States military command.
The worst of the bombings, in a bustling market of the central Karada district, seemed intended to inflict casualties on people preparing to celebrate a major holiday at the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
