Baghdad, July 31: At least 30 people were killed and 37 injured Friday in a series of attacks targeting five Shia mosques in Baghdad, Iraqi security sources said.
Police forces cordoned all the areas around the mosques in al-Shaab, al-Zaafaraniya, al-Kahira and al-Kamaliya districts.
Later, a fifth explosion took place near Diyala bridge in the city’s south. The blasts took place right after the Friday prayers.
According to the Voices of Iraq news agency, a car bomb that went off near al-Shroufi mosque in the northern district of al-Shaab left 15 civilians killed and 40 wounded.
The agency quoted a source saying that “the casualties are most likely to rise, owing to the powerful explosion and the serious wounds sustained by many victims”.
Earlier police sources said that two policemen were killed Friday by a bomb targeting their patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Late Thursday, two people, a man and a woman, were killed when a gunman threw a grenade on a house in Ras al-Jada district in western Mosul, the source said, adding that the blast left a woman and her her 13-year-old boy wounded.
Meanwhile, four civilians were wounded Friday when a rocket hit a house in the southern port city of Basra.
“The rocket was one of six Katyushas that targeted a military base of the Multi-National Force at the Basra International Airport,” a security source was quoted by the Voices of Iraq news agency as saying.
However, he said nothing about any damage from the other five rockets targeting the base, which is located 25 km northwest of the oil-rich city.
–IANS