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| Iraq |
| Evening bomb blasts kill 30 in Baghdad |
| 2013-05-31 |
| Bomb blasts tore through two Baghdad neighborhoods Wednesday evening, killing at least 30 people including several members of a wedding party, and extending a relentless wave of bloodshed roiling Iraq. WednesdayÂ’s deadliest attack struck a commercial street in the mixed Sunni-Shia Jihad neighborhood, killing 18 and wounding 42, police said. Many of those slain were in a wedding party that was passing by when the blast went off, according to authorities. The southwestern neighborhood was one of the earliest flashpoints in BaghdadÂ’s descent into sectarian bloodshed in the years following the 2003 US led invasion. It housed mainly Sunni civil servants and security officials under Saddam HusseinÂ’s regime, though many Shias now live there too. Many of JihadÂ’s Sunni residents earlier this year received threatening leaflets from a Shia militant group warning them to leave. The group, the Mukhtar Army, is not known to have carried out car bombings in the past. Another 12 people were killed and 31 were wounded when a roadside bomb and then a car bomb exploded near a market, killing 10 people and wounding 25, police said. Hospital officials confirmed the casualties. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. |
| Posted by:Steve White |