Baghdad market bombing leaves at least 17 dead

PanARMENIAN.Net - At least 17 people were killed by bombs in markets in Baghdad and attacks in northern Iraq on Thursday, May 16 police said, adding to a surge of sectarian-tinged violence in the past four weeks, Reuters said.

Attacks on Sunni and Shi'ite mosques, security forces and tribal leaders have mushroomed since security forces raided a Sunni protest camp near Kirkuk a month ago, igniting clashes and fuelling worries of a slide back into all-out sectarian war.

Iraq has grown more volatile as the civil war in neighboring Syria strains fragile relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Tensions are now at their highest since the last U.S. troops pulled out at the end of 2011.

Three car bombs exploded in busy markets in eastern and northeastern Shi'ite districts of the Iraqi capital, killing at least 14 people and wounding 26, police said.

In a separate incident, assailants with silenced weapons shot dead a prominent Sunni tribal leader in his car in southern Baghdad and seriously wounded his driver, police said.

In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide car bomber attacked a military checkpoint, killing two soldiers and wounding three, and a separate car bomb wounded two soldiers on patrol.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the latest violence, which followed bombings that killed more than 35 people in Baghdad and the north on Wednesday.

According to the United Nations, April was Iraq's bloodiest month for almost five years, with 712 people killed.