Car bombings kill 4, wound 41 in Iraq

At least four people were killed and 41 wounded in three car bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and in the northern part of the country on Wednesday, police said. A car bomb went off near the buildings of the Iraqi ministries of industry and education in central Baghdad, killing two people and wounding eight others, an interior ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Another car bomb exploded at the rear gate of a police station in Sadoun Street in downtown Baghdad, wounding three people and left a nearby shop burned, the source added. Also, at least two civilians were killed and 30 wounded when a truck bomb detonated near a house of a police officer in Imam Ahmed district in the city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 180 km north of Baghdad, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua. The huge blast left some 15 nearby houses and several private cars damaged, the source said. The Tuz-Khurmato city is part of the disputed areas between the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkomans. The Kurds want to incorporate these areas into their domain, which is fiercely opposed by the central government. The attacks came in the wake of violence that swept the country on Tuesday, including a series of bombings in the evening in Baghdad, which killed a total of 39 people and wounded 117 others. Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, which raises fears that Iraq is sliding back toward the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.