Bombs in Iraqi Shi'ite provinces kill 24

By Aref Mohammed

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - A string of bomb blasts in predominantly Shi'ite Muslim provinces of Iraq killed at least 24 people on Sunday, police and medics said.

The violence is part of a sustained campaign of militant attacks this year that has prompted fears of wider conflict in a country where ethnic Kurds and Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable power-sharing compromise.
A suicide bomber killed at least four people in a Shi'ite mosque in the town of Mussayab, and in Kut city, a car bomb went off in a busy market, killing five, police and medics said.
Three bombs exploded in quick succession near the headquarters of a Shi'ite political party in the southern oil hub of Basra, 420 km (260 miles) southeast of Baghdad, killing at least eight people, police said.
"When the first explosion happened, I ran to evacuate the victims. I saw two or three burned bodies before police asked me to step back," said a man who gave his name only as Alaa. "When police forced me to move away, the second explosion happened."
Two car bombs went off in a market in Nassiriya, 300 km (185 miles) southeast of Baghdad, killing two people. Another car bomb killed four at a busy market in the Shi'ite shrine city of Kerbala, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Baghdad, police said.
It was not clear who was behind Sunday's explosions, but Sunni Islamist insurgents, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq, have been regaining strength in recent months, security sources say.
Sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which is fast becoming a region-wide proxy war, drawing in Shi'ite and Sunni fighters from Iraq and beyond to fight on opposite sides of the conflict.
On Saturday, two bombings near Sunni mosques in Baghdad killed at least 23 people who had come to pray after breaking their daily fast for the holy month of Ramadan.
More than 300 people have been killed so far in July, according to the violence monitoring group Iraq Body Count.
The bloodshed has stoked fears that Iraq is sliding back into all-out conflict, though it has yet to match the sectarian carnage of 2006-07 when monthly death tolls sometimes topped 3,000.
(Additional reporting by Ali al-Rubaie in Hilla; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Alistair Lyon

Comments

Why States Still Use Barrel Bombs

Smoke ascends after a Syrian military helicopter allegedly dropped a barrel bomb over the city of Daraya on Jan. 31.(FADI DIRANI/AFP/Getty Images) Summary Barrel bombs are not especially effective weapons. They are often poorly constructed; they fail to detonate more often than other devices constructed for a similar purpose; and their lack of precision means they can have a disproportionate effect on civilian populations. However, combatants continue to use barrel bombs in conflicts, including in recent and ongoing conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, and they are ideally suited to the requirements of resource-poor states. Analysis Barrel bombs are improvised devices that contain explosive filling and shrapnel packed into a container, often in a cylindrical shape such as a barrel. The devices continue to be dropped on towns all over Syria . Indeed, there have been several documented cases of their use in Iraq over the past months, and residents of the city of Mosul, which was re

Russia Looks East for New Oil Markets

Click to Enlarge In the final years of the Soviet Union, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began orienting his foreign policy toward Asia in response to a rising Japan. Putin has also piloted a much-touted pivot to Asia, coinciding with renewed U.S. interest in the area. A good expression of intent was Russia's hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2012 in Vladivostok, near Russia's borders with China and North Korea. Although its efforts in Asia have been limited by more direct interests in Russia's periphery and in Europe, Moscow recently has been able to look more to the east. Part of this renewed interest involves finding new export markets for Russian hydrocarbons. Russia's economy relies on energy exports, particularly crude oil and natural gas exported via pipeline to the West. However, Western Europe is diversifying its energy sources as new supplies come online out of a desire to reduce its dependence on Russian energy supplies . This has

LONDON POLICE INDIRECTLY ENCOURAGE CRIMINALS TO ATTACK RUSSIAN DIPLOMATIC PROPERTY

ILLUSTRATIVE IMAGE A few days ago an unknown perpetrator trespassed on the territory of the Russian Trade Delegation in London, causing damage to the property and the vehicles belonging to the trade delegation , Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during the September 12 press briefing. The diplomat revealed the response by the London police was discouraging. Police told that the case does not have any prospects and is likely to be closed. This was made despite the fact that the British law enforcement was provided with video surveillance tapes and detailed information shedding light on the incident. By this byehavior, British law inforcements indirectly encourage criminals to continue attacks on Russian diplomatic property in the UK. Zakharova’s statement on “Trespassing on the Russian Trade Mission premises in London” ( source ): During our briefings, we have repeatedly discussed compliance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, specif

ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Search This Blog