Suicide bomber kills 12 at Iraq cafe

A suicide bomber struck a cafe north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing 12 people and wounding 35, police and a doctor said. The same cafe in the town of Balad was attacked by a suicide bomber in August, when 16 people were killed. Militants have carried out a number of attacks on cafes in Iraq in recent months, and have also targeted other places where crowds gather, including mosques, football fields, funerals and markets. Violence has reached a level unseen since 2008, and there are fears Iraq may relapse into the kind of intense Sunni-Shiite bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people. With the latest violence, more than 70 people have been killed in attacks so far this month, and over 4,750 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources. Source: AFP