Baghdad - XINHUA
Up to 35 people were killed and 70 others wounded in separate bomb attacks across Iraq on Tuesday, police and medical sources said. The deadliest attack occurred at noon in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad when a suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest among a crowd of Shiite worshippers inside Abu al-Timan mosque, leaving 19 people killed and 34 others wounded, a police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Insurgent groups frequently attacked Shiite pilgrims who perform communal rituals in the Iraqi cities, killing and wounding hundreds of them in attempt to provoke sectarian strife. In a separate incident, a roadside bomb went off at a popular marketplace at the predominantly Shiite district of Sadr City in the eastern part of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding nine others, along with damaging several nearby shops and stalls, the source said. Also in the capital, two roadside bombs detonated in a quick succession near a police patrol in Baghdad's southern district of Doura, leaving two policemen and two passers-by wounded, the source added. In Anbar province, 12 people were killed and 20 others wounded by artillery and mortar shelling on several neighborhoods in the militant-seized city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, a medical source from the city hospital told Xinhua. Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December last year. Elsewhere, a soldier was killed and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol on a main road just north of the city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, a local police source said. Meanwhile, a taxi driver was killed when a sticky bomb attached to this car detonated while driving on a main road in east of Tikrit, the source added.