Baghdad, Oct 28

A fresh wave of car bombs struck the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad and the country's northern region Sunday, killing 56 people and wounding some 152, police said.

The worst violence in the day started in Baghdad in the morning, when at least eight car bombs ripped through commercial areas, killing 32 people and wounding 94, in seven of Baghdad's Shiite-majority districts, Xinhua reported citing a police source.

In one of the attacks, a car bomb went off at a popular market in Sabie al-Bour district in the northern part of Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 18 others, the source said.

Another car bomb detonated at a marketplace and a nearby parking lot in al-Huriyah district in northeastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 10 others, the source added.

Four people were killed and seven wounded when a car bomb exploded at a marketplace in Mashtal district in eastern Baghdad, while a fourth car bomb struck a popular market at Shaab district in the northeastern part of the capital, killing four people and wounding 17.

A car bomb hit Abu Dsheer district in southern Baghdad and killed at least six people and wounded 14 others. Another car bomb went off at a thoroughfare in Baghdad's southern district of Baiyaa, killing five people and wounding 11, the source said.

Two more car bombs were detonated in a quick succession at a crowded market in the southeastern suburb of Nahrawan, killing at least five people and wounding 17, he added.

Fourteen people were killed and 55 wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden car near dozens of soldiers and retired military officers who were gathering to collect their salaries from a government-owned bank in Mosul city, some 400 km north of Baghdad.

"Three soldiers and 11 civilians were killed, and the wounded included nine soldiers and 46 civilians," a police source said, adding that the civilians were retired officers, bank employees and customers.

Three soldiers were killed and another was wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol in al-Rashidiyah area in northern part of Mosul.

Also in Mosul, unidentified armed men shot dead two construction workers in eastern part of the city.

Elsewhere, gunmen attacked a house in a village near Dowr city, some 150 km north of Baghdad, and shot dead a member of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group, his son and his nephew before they fled the scene.

In the same area, another Sahwa group member was wounded in a roadside bomb attack.

The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-US Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the Al Qaeda network after Sahwa's leaders became dismayed by the group's brutality and religious zealotry in the country.

Separately, unidentified gunmen blew up seven under construction houses belonging to police and army officers in Tikrit city, some 170 km north of Baghdad, a police source said.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, two farmers were shot dead by gunmen at a village near the town of Abu Saiyda, some 30 km northeast of the provincial capital city of Baquba, which is about 65 km northeast of Baghdad.

A policeman was wounded in a roadside bomb blast near his patrol in the western part of Baquba, a source said.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has said that almost 6,000 civilians were killed and over 14,000 others injured in Iraq from January to September this year. 

By:IANS