Series of blasts across Iraq kills 20 and injures around 130

 Series of blasts across Iraq A mass of bombs and shooting attacks across Iraq on the eve of a festival marking the Islamic New Year killed 20 people and wounded at least 131 others on Wednesday, officials said. The 13 bombings and shootings struck in Baghdad and nine other cities, the security and medical officials said, and will likely raise tensions in a country mired in political deadlock and which suffered a brutal sectarian war.
Wednesday's deadliest blasts struck in Kirkuk, a disputed ethnically mixed oil-rich province in north Iraq frequently targeted by militants seeking to sow communal violence, where at least nine people were killed and 39 wounded.
Two car bombs and a roadside blast in Kirkuk's eponymous capital killed five people and wounded 34 others, while another explosives-packed vehicle targeting an army patrol in the town of Hawijah, also in Kirkuk province, left four dead and five others wounded, officials said.
Another roadside bomb targeted a convoy of Diyala's governor Omar Humairi, but the governor and all his escorts escaped death.
In Baghdad, a car bomb targeting an army general's convoy blew up near the Palestine hotel in an area frequented by foreigners, killing a guard in the convoy. General Qassim Nouri, in charge of security at the Baghdad municipality, was unhurt, according to police sources.
The explosion was in Firdos Square, famed for scenes of the toppling of the huge statue of Saddam Hussein shortly after the 2003 US-led invasion.
Another car bomb was detonated in the town of al-Hufriyah, in Wasit province, roughly 70km south of Baghdad.
Hospital sources there say two people were killed and eight injured in the explosion near a restaurant. Al-Hufriyah is a mainly Shia town, surrounded by a Sunni area which had reportedly been a stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
A car bomb also exploded in Baji, north of Baghdad, known for a major refinery, and yet another in Balad Rhuz, in Diyala province. A dozen people were wounded, but no fatalities have yet been reported.
Two bombs have also rocked Mosul, one at a police station and a second near an army patrol. At least five soldiers and two civilians were injured in the blast. Explosives experts also carried out controlled detonations of two further bombs found inside Mosul University.
Four more bombings and two shootings in the restive provinces of Diyala and Salaheddine, both north of Baghdad, wounded 22 others.
The attacks come a day before the Muharram month, which marks the Islamic New Year on the lunar calendar. They were highly condemned by London-based human rights group Amnesty International as showing “utter contempt for humanity."