A car bomb blamed on al Qaeda at a market in central Iraq killed eight people on Wednesday and three others were murdered in Baghdad, the latest in a spike in unrest ahead of Shia rituals. The violence came a day after a series of attacks across Iraq, the bloodiest of which was also blamed on al Qaeda's front group in Iraq, killed 38 amid preparations for ceremonies on Friday to commemorate the birth of a key figure in Shia Islam.
In Wednesday's deadliest attack, a car bombing in the town of Zubaidiyah at 9:15 am (0615 GMT) killed eight people and wounded 37 others, a security official and a medic at a hospital in nearby Aziziyah said on condition of anonymity. The medical official said a child was among the dead, and women and children were among the wounded.
"This explosion bears the fingerprints of al Qaeda, and the followers of Saddam," provincial governor Mehdi Hussein al-Zubaidi told AFP, referring to now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein. Zubaidi's remarks echoed those of the governor of Diwaniyah province a day earlier, after it suffered a massive truck bomb that left 26 dead. About a dozen shops were badly damaged by the Zubaidiyah bombing, an AFP correspondent at the scene said, adding that security officials imposed a vehicle curfew on the town in the aftermath of the attack.
In Baghdad, a series of assassinations by gunmen using silenced pistols left three people dead - two police officers and a parliament official. In one shooting, policewoman Ibtisam Ibrahim was killed by gunshots to the head in the east of the capital, an interior ministry official and a medic at Al-Kindi hospital said. In west Baghdad, off-duty police First Lieutenant Ahmed Swadi, who was wearing civilian clothes, was killed, the interior ministry official and a doctor at Yarmuk hospital said.