BAGHDAD: A wave of car bombings targeting those celebrating the end of Ramadan across Iraq killed 69 people Saturday, a bloody reminder of the inability of Iraqi authorities to stop violence threatening to spiral out of control.

Violence has been on the rise across Iraq since a deadly crackdown by government forces on a Sunni protest camp in April, and attacks against civilians and security forces notably spiked during Ramadan. The surge of attacks has sparked fears that the country could see a new round of widespread sectarian bloodshed similar to that which brought the country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007.

The bloodshed also comes after Iraqi security forces promised to step up efforts to increase security to protect the public during the Eid al-Fitr celebrations that mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This year’s Ramadan was the most violence since 2007, with 671 people killed.

“My shop’s windows were smashed and smoke filled the whole area,” said shoe shop owner Saif Mousa, who survived an attack near his store in New Baghdad. “I went outside of the shop and I could hardly see because of the smoke. … At the end, we had a terrible day that was supposed to be nice because of Eid.”

Many of the attacks occurred within an hour of each other, suggesting a level of coordination in the assaults. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, though security forces and civilians are frequently targeted by al-Qaida’s Iraq branch.

U.S. Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki condemned the attacks, saying in a statement that they are similar to suicide and vehicle bomb attacks in the country in the past month-and-a-half conducted by al-Qaida’s Iraq branch.

The group is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and al-Baghdadi has taken personal credit for a series of terrorist attacks in Iraq since 2011, including an attack against the Abu Ghraib prison, Psaki said.

The U.S. has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture or death and the reward is second only to information leading to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief of the Al Qaeda network.

“The terrorists who committed these acts are enemies of Islam and a shared enemy of the United States, Iraq, and the international community,” the statement said.
Police said the deadliest of Saturday’s attacks took place when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a residential area in the town of Tuz Khormato, killing eight people and wounding dozens, Mayor Shalal Abdool said. The town is about 200 kilometers (130 miles) north of the Iraqi capital.

Police said a car bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the Baghdad’s southeastern suburbs of Jisr Diyala shortly before sunset, killing seven people and wounding 20.

Also in southeastern Baghdad, officials said a car bomb went off inside a parking lot in the mainly Shiite New Baghdad neighborhood, killing three people. Another car bomb exploded in a busy street in the Shiite neighborhood of Amil, killing three people and wounding 14, authorities said. They said another car bomb in Amil killed 3 people and wounded 14.

In the holy Shiite city of Karbala, police said four people were killed in a car bomb attack near a cafe at night. Karbala is 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad.

Police said four people were killed and 15 wounded when a car bomb exploded near a cafe in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Abu Dashir.

In northern Baghdad, a car bomb hit a restaurant in the Shiite area of Khazimiyah, killing five people and wounding 14, authorities said. Police also said that five people were killed when a car bomb exploded near a cafe in Baghdad’s southwestern neighborhood of Baiyaa.

Six people were killed and 15 were wounded in a car bomb explosion in the Shiite neighborhood of Shaab in northeastern Baghdad, officials said.

A car bomb hit near restaurant in the city’s northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing seven people and wounding 15, police said.

Also, a car bomb explosion a commercial street in the Dora area in southern Baghdad killed five and wounded 15, authorities said.

Earlier in the day, four people, including two children, were killed when a bomb exploded near a park just south of Baghdad, authorities said.

Later, a car bomb exploded in a busy street in Nasiriyah city in southern Iraq, killing four people and wounding 41 others, officials said. Nasiriyah is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad.

In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a car bomb hit near a Shiite mosque, killing one person and wounding 20 others, police said.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures for all the attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

The death toll in Saturday’s attacks is the highest single-day total since July 20, when brazen assaults on two prisons near Baghdad plus other attacks left 71 dead.

More than 1,000 people were killed in Iraq in July, the highest monthly death toll in five years, according to the United Nations. The U.N. described the increase as particularly troubling because the numbers had begun declining five years ago following a series of U.S.-led offensives and a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq.

Iraqi officials have attributed the recent uptick in the death toll figures to a change in tactics by insurgents who are now trying to attack crowded, soft civilian targets such as cafes, mosques and markets in order to kill as many people as possible.

Several witnesses said they saw dead bodies after hearing multiple blasts at around 9:30 p.m. (2030 GMT) in the Sabon Gari district, a predominantly Christian area dominated by ethnic Igbos from the southeast.

“In all bomb attacks 15 were killed,” the policeman in Kano told Reuters, asking not to be named.

Military spokesman Ikedichi Iweha confirmed there had been a bomb explosion but gave no further details.

“I heard two explode around Enugu Road and another two near Forest Villa Hotel,” said local trader Emeka Mike. “After the blasts I saw many bodies lying on the ground.”

The military did not say who was suspected of carrying out the bombings, but Boko Haram killed at least 25 people in multiple bomb blasts in Sabon Gari in March.

A concerted military crackdown in Boko Haram’s northeast stronghold since mid-May has weakened a 4-year-old insurgency, which is fighting to carve an Islamic state out of religiously mixed Nigeria.

But it has also pushed the militants into hiding and security sources had feared attacks could spread to other areas of northern Nigeria like Kano or to neighbouring countries.

Militants have also shifted their focus away from security forces onto civilian targets, killing children in at least four school attacks over the past month and killing 20 civilians in an attack on a remote northeast village last weekend.

At least 10 people were killed when two car bombs blew up near a bus station in the city of Kut, 150 kilometers (95 miles) southeast of the capital, police said.

Four more died in a blast in the town of Mahmoudiya, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad.

The rest of the bombings took place across Baghdad, in Sadr city, Habibiya, Hurriya, Bayaa, Ur, Shurta, Kadhimiya and Risala neighborhoods.

A relentless campaign of bombings and shootings has killed nearly 4,000 people in Iraq since the start of the year, according to violence monitoring group Iraq Body Count.

The violence has raised fears of a return to full-blown conflict in a country where Kurds, Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable way of sharing power.

In recent months, Sunni Islamist militants have regained momentum an their insurgency against the Shi’ite-led government, striking with a ferocity not seen in years.

In July alone, more than 810 people have lost their lives in militant attacks.

Sectarian tensions across the region have been inflamed by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which has drawn Shi’ites and Sunnis from Iraq and beyond into battle on opposite sides.

The deadliest attack was in the mainly Shi’ite Muslim Shaab district of northern Baghdad, where twin car bombs killed eight people.

A sustained campaign of attacks since the start of the year has increased fears of wider conflict in a country where ethnic Kurds, Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable power-sharing compromise.

Insurgents have been recruiting from Iraq’s Sunni minority, which resents Shi’ite domination since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which is fast spreading into a region-wide proxy war, drawing in Shi’ite and Sunni fighters from Iraq and elsewhere to fight on opposite sides of the conflict.

Twenty-five others were injured, police official Javed Khan Marwat said.

At least 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of explosives were packed into a vehicle and detonated as the Frontier Corps convoy passed by, the official said.

The dead included six policemen and a paramilitary Ranger, said Sharjeel Memon, the information minister for southern Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital. The explosion also wounded 15 people, including policemen and Rangers as well as the judge, he said.

The Sindh High Court judge who was targeted, Maqbool Baqir, was being treated at a private hospital, and his condition was stable, said Memon.

“We had provided maximum security to Maqbool Baqir, and he was wounded in today’s bomb attack at his convoy,” said Memon.

Baqir was on his way to court when the bomb exploded, said senior police official Ameer Sheik. The bomb, which was attached to a motorcycle, was so powerful that it damaged some nearby shops.

Local TV footage showed authorities transporting victims of the attack to the hospital.

Ahsanullah Ahsan, the spokesman for Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility, saying they detonated the bomb by remote control.

“We attacked the judge in Karachi as he was taking decisions against Shariah and he was harmful for mujahideen,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone call from an unknown place.

Karachi is Pakistan’s largest city with 18 million people and has a long history of violence, both by gangs connected to political parties and increasingly by Taliban militants who have relocated there from sanctuaries in the northwest along the Afghan border.

Earlier this week, on the other side of Pakistan, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for a militant attack on a climbing camp at the foot of the country’s second-highest mountain in which 10 foreign tourists and a Pakistani guide were killed.

Tribal police officer Badshah Rehman says the blasts Friday in Baz Darrah village in the Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province also wounded over 30 people.

Rehman says the roof of one of the mosques collapsed following the explosion. The other mosque was also badly damaged. Rescue workers are trying to retrieve bodies from the rubble.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but suspicion will likely fall on the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan (AP) — A suicide bomber targeting police killed at least 10 people in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, including the son and nephew of an Afghan official involved in peace negotiations with the Taliban, authorities said.

The bomber was riding a motorcycle and detonated his explosives as the police patrol drove by in Peshawar, said city police chief Liaqat Ali Khan.

The two Afghans who were killed, Qazi Mohammad Hilal Waqadand Mohammad Idrees, were working at their country’s consulate in Peshawar, said Afghan Consul General Syed Mohammad Ibrahim Khel in Peshawar.

However, it did not appear they were the target of the attack, Khel said.

Waqad’s father, Qazi Amin Waqad, is a member of the Afghan High Peace Council, said an official at the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad, Shakir Qarar. The council was appointed by the Afghan government to hold peace talks with the Taliban to end the 11-year-old war in neighboring Afghanistan. The peace council member was in Afghanistan when the attack occurred, and Waqad and Idrees were driving to work at the time, Qarar added.

The blast killed 10 people and wounded 42, said Khan, the Peshawar police chief. Three policemen were among the wounded. Many of the dead and wounded were on a nearby passenger bus, which bore the brunt of the explosion, said Khan.

Local TV footage showed the wreckage of the bus and the motorcycle, as rescue workers rushed wounded people to hospitals in the city.

No one immediately claimed responsibility.

The Pakistani Taliban has been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years and has stepped up attacks ahead of next month’s parliamentary election.

Also Monday, two gunmen riding a motorcycle attacked a campaign office of an anti-Taliban political party in northwestern Pakistan, killing a worker there, police chief Khan said. The Awami National Party office is in the city of Nowshera.

Elsewhere in the northwest, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a vehicle carrying Awami National Party candidate, Mohammad Ahmed Khan, in Charsadda district, said local police chief Ghulam Hussain. Khan was not hurt, but one person was killed and nine were wounded, said Hussain.

On Sunday, the Taliban killed 11 people in bomb attacks on a political rally and two campaign offices in the northwest, part of their quest to disrupt the election. The group has killed at least 60 people in attacks on politicians and party workers since the beginning of April.

The Taliban have specifically targeted secular political parties that have supported military offensives against the militants in the northwest. The Taliban have largely spared Islamic parties and others who believe the government should strike a peace deal with the militants, rather than fight them.

There is a concern that the violence could benefit the parties that take a softer line toward the militants, because they are able to campaign more freely ahead of the May 11 election.

“Unless the government, the country’s independent election commission and security forces ensure that all parties can campaign freely without fear, the election may be severely compromised,” Ali Dayan Hasan, the head of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, said in a statement issued Monday.

Bashir Jan, a senior member of the Awami National Party who survived a recent bomb attack in the southern city of Karachi, also criticized the government for not doing enough to protect candidates, but he said they were determined to carry on.

“These attacks will not deter us,” Jan said at a press conference in Karachi. “We are determined to contest elections.”

The Pakistani army on Monday finalized its plan to deploy troops to provide security during the upcoming election after discussions with civilian officials, the army said in a written statement that didn’t provide further details.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A bomb hidden in a rickshaw exploded outside a bus terminal near a busy bazar in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least nine people and wounding 40, officials said.

The explosion came hours after a U.S. drone targeted a vehicle in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border, killing three suspected militants, two intelligence officials said. The rickshaw bomb struck in the town of Jafarabad, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) east of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province. It also destroyed several shops, said senior government official Syed Zafar Bukhari.

Bukhari said the motive for the attack was not clear. He said the victims were taken to a hospital, where some of the injured were listed in critical condition. “I can only confirm that the bomb killed nine people,” Bukhari told The Associated Press by phone. “It would be premature to say who orchestrated the attack.” Although no group claimed responsibility, suspicion fell on Bluch nationalists who have waged a decades-long insurgency against the government in Baluchistan for greater autonomy and a larger share of the province’s natural resources.

The province is also home to many radical Islamist militants. In the drone strike, a pair of missiles fired from the unmanned aircraft hit a vehicle in a bazar near the Datta Khel village of North Waziristan tribal region at about midnight Thursday, the two intelligence officials said. The suspects were traveling from the border town of Shawal to Datta Khel, a stronghold of local Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. They said the nationalities and identities of the slain men were not immediately known. Pakistani government and army spokesmen could not be reached for comment. Drone strikes often cause tension between Washington and Islamabad.

They are extremely unpopular in this Islamic nation, where many people believe the drone attacks mostly kill civilians, an allegation disputed by U.S. officials. The CIA drone strikes have killed scores of suspected al-Qaida and Taliban men in Pakistan’s tribal region over the past few years. The secret nature of the program makes it difficult to determine how many civilians are being killed.

Senior government official Aqil Badshah said the bus was going from the garrison city of Rawalpindi to the northern town of Gilgit when the accident happened in the Kohistan district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

He said the dead and injured were taken to a nearby hospital, and authorities were making arrangements to transport the bodies to Rawalpindi city near the capital Islamabad.

In a statement, the military said the dead and injured soldiers were originally from Gilgit, and were on leave traveling there from their base in the scenic valley of Swat.

Road accidents are common in Pakistan because of poor infrastructure and routine disregard of traffic laws.

On February 23, a bus carrying a wedding party plunged into a canal in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 17 people.

Most among the dead were women and children, and authorities at the time had said the driver’s negligence caused the tragedy.