34 killed, 101 wounded in Iraq's attacks

A series of violent attacks, including deadly bombings at mosques, across Iraq on Friday, killing 34 people and wounding 101 others, as the country struggles to contain the worst violence since 2008. The deadliest attack occurred in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala when a bomb hidden under the podium of the Imam went off in the crowded Abu Bakr al-Sideeq mosque during the weekly Friday Muslim prayer, killing up to 26 worshippers and wounding some 80 others, according to the latest police report. The attack took place in Wajihiyah, a small Sunni town located some 25 km northeast of Diyala's provincial city of Baquba, which itself is about 65 km northeast of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. Earlier in the day, the police said that a civilian was killed and two wounded when a bomb planted in his shop detonated in the city of Maqdadiyah, some 40 km northeast of Baquba, while a soldier was wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near his patrol in Buhruz area, some 10 km south of Baquba. Sectarian tension and reprisal killings have been running high recently between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the volatile province of Diyala, as Sunnis and Shiites accuse each other of supporting extremists and militiamen. In a separate incident, a policeman foiled a suicide bomb attack when he spotted a suicide bomber trying to enter a Shiite mosque in the town of Jbala, some 50 south of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity The policeman prevented the suicide bomber from approaching the mosque, forcing him to blow up his explosive vest outside the mosque, which killed the policeman and wounded five worshippers, the source said. In the early hours of the day, the police said that two women were killed and two wounded when a mortar round landed on their house in al-Mahlabiyah area, in west of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad. Late on Thursday, unidentified gunmen broke into a house in Ur neighborhood in the eastern part of Baghdad and shot dead three women before they fled the scene, the police said. In a separate incident, 11 young men playing football were wounded on Thursday night when two mortar rounds hit a football pitch in western Samarra city, some 120 km north of Baghdad, the police added. On Friday morning, gunmen shot dead a shop owner at his shop in Nahrawan area in southeastern part of Baghdad. Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is leading the country back toward a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.