Insurgents killed at least 30 people and aggravated Iraq's hostile ethnic divide with a string of bombs in the northern city of Kirkuk, as well as attacks in volatile Anbar province and in Baghdad on Sunday.In Kirkuk, a huge suicide truck bomb in coordination with four other vehicle bombs killed 23 people and wounded 77 others. Mortars and car bombs killed five in the city of Fallujah in Iraq's biggest and most volatile province of Anbar, where U.S. forces are being reduced to reinforce the capital Baghdad. Kirkuk is an oil-rich flashpoint in the north disputed by Sunni Arabs, ethnic Kurds and Turkmen. A failure to contain violence could spark all-out war across a country already in the grip of sectarian strife between Muslim Shi'ites and Sunnis.
In the deadliest blast on Sunday, a suicide attacker driving a truck rigged with explosives blew himself up outside a police center killing 17 people, mostly civilians, police said. The toll included 10 women and two children visiting relatives. Within an hour, a car bomb targeting a U.S. military patrol killed three civilians and wounded six in the city. Minutes later, another suicide car bomber rammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint, wounding two soldiers. Two other car bombs followed.