37 killed, 64 wounded in attacks across Iraq

BAGHDAD - Separate attacks across Iraq killed at least 37 people and injured 64 others on Thursday, the country's police said.

Nine people were killed and 27 others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded during a wedding ceremony of a Shiite family in Dujail, 60 km north of Baghdad, on Thursday evening, a local police officer said.

Dujail is a Shiite Muslim town surrounded by Sunni areas. Tensions between the two Islam branches have escalated because the Sunnis feel increasingly marginalized by the Shiite-led government in Iraq.

Unknown gunmen opened fire at a woman and killed her on the spot in front of her house in Zahra neighborhood, east of Mosul, the police said, adding that eight people, including two soldiers, were wounded when a car bomb exploded in Tal Afar, 70 km west of Mosul.

Also on Thursday, a car bomb went off at a parking lot of a government office in the city center of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, wounding two policemen and two civilians, a local police source said anonymously.

In another bloody attack, 10 soldiers and four civilians were killed when a suicide bomber attacked an army checkpoint with a booby-trapped tank near Ramadi, 100 km west of the capital Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The attack also injured 10 others, including four soldiers, the source added.

Also Thursday, a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden fuel tanker into a military barrack in Anbar province, a former insurgent stronghold, killing at least nine soldiers and injuring 11, a police said.

To undermine the government's efforts to step up security, militants have intensified their attacks in areas like Anbar province.

Unidentified gunmen opened fire with machine guns at a checkpoint of the Iraqi army in Aslah neighborhood in western Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, killing two soldiers, a police officer told Xinhua.

Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and four civilians wounded when a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol in Baath neighborhood in eastern Mosul, he added.

Iraq is witnessing the worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is bringing the country back to a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.