Iraq bombings, clashes kill 62
Middle East Desk Report

BAGHDAD—A spate of bombings across Iraq which the US military blamed on Al-Qaeda and a fresh surge of fighting between Shiite militiamen and US forces in Baghdad killed at least 62 people on Tuesday.
A car bomb outside a courthouse in the central city of Baquba, a stronghold of the jihadists, killed at least 40 people and wounded 80 in the most devastating attack in the violence-wracked country in a month, police said.
Medical officials said many of the victims were charred beyond recognition and people were crowding the local hospital trying to identify the remains of relatives. Three minibuses were destroyed and 10 houses damaged in the blast, which sparked pandemonium, a correspondent said. “At least 40 people were killed, including one woman and a police officer, when a car bomb exploded outside the main courtroom in Baquba,” said a police official who would not be named. He added that at least 80 people were wounded.
Dr Ahmed Fuad at the local hospital in Baquba, 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of Baghdad, confirmed the toll and said many of the victims “were burnt beyond recognition.” Brigadier General Ragib al-Omairi, an Iraqi army commander in Baquba, said among the dead were three policemen, a traffic police officer, three women and “a number of people no one can identify.” Among the 90 wounded, he added, were 15 policemen, six women and two children. Baquba, capital of the central province of Diyala, is one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq and regarded as an Al-Qaeda stronghold.
Soon after the car bomb attack, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a restaurant in the western city of Ramadi killing 13 people, the city’s police chief, Major General Tareq al-Youssef said. He added that another 14 people were wounded in the attack which struck at around 12:30 pm (0930 GMT) in a restaurant near the western outskirts of the city, the capital of Anbar province.
In the main northern city of Mosul, twin car bombs exploded in quick succession as a US military and Iraqi police patrol passed wounding 17 people, police said. Four policemen were among the wounded in the attack, which followed three separate car bombings in Mosul on Monday, one of which targeted a passing patrol of US and Iraqi troops killing one person and wounding six. Security officials in Baghdad, meanwhile, reported two workers killed and two policemen wounded on Tuesday by a roadside bomb planted near a police station in Baghdad’s central Karrada neighbourhood. A later car bomb, also in Karrada, killed one person and wounded six, including four policemen.
The US military blamed the attacks in Baquba, Ramadi and Baghdad on Al-Qaeda. “Iraqis killed and wounded in today’s brutal attacks in Baquba, Ramadi and Baghdad were innocent victims of extremists who subscribe to a philosophy of hatred. The attacks have the appearance of having been carried out by Al-Qaeda Iraq,” the military said in a statement. Since Monday, more than 80 people have been killed in a surge of insurgent attacks across Iraq, which come at a time when security forces are fighting street battles with Shiite militiamen in Baghdad’s Sadr City.
Renewed fighting on Tuesday between the militiamen, mostly linked to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and security forces killed six people, the American military told. “Coalition forces took on small arms fire during an operation in Al-Sudayrah early Tuesday,” the military said, referring to an area inside Sadr City.