The deadliest bombing on Sunday was near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, against a checkpoint manned jointly by Iraqi police and members of an awakening group.The U.S. military said a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi checkpoint in a market in Balad, killing at least 23 civilians and wounding 25. U.S. and Iraqi forces had secured the area and the wounded had been evacuated to hospitals, according to a statement.
The explosion came hours after suspected al-Qaida-linked insurgents stormed two villages near the Syrian border but were repelled by U.S.-allied fighters and Iraqi security forces in clashes that left at least 22 people dead.
Sheik Fawaz al-Jarba, the head of the Mosul anti-al-Qaida group, and other officials said the 22 killed included 10 militants and six members of the so-called awakening group in the area, as well as four women and two children. The U.S. military in northern Iraq confirmed an attack on compound housing its Sunni allies against al-Qaida in Iraq near Sinjar, about 60 miles west of Mosul, saying five U.S.-allied fighters were killed, five wounded and 10 insurgents were killed.
Insurgents also attacked a group of civilians elsewhere in the northern Ninevah province on Sunday, killing two men and one child and wounding two other men, two women and two infants, according to the military.
Iraqi police also said four civilians were killed Sunday when a tanker truck laden with explosives blew up near an Iraqi army checkpoint on Mosul's southern outskirts.