BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – A series of bombings and shootings killed more than 70 people across Iraq yesterday in a bloody day of attacks underscoring the country’s struggle with a stubborn insurgency more than half a year after the U.S. military withdrew.
In the worst of the blasts that erupted in the morning and ended in the evening, at least 27 people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside a cafe in Baghdad’s Zafraniya district as Iraqis took to the streets to end daily fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Shortly before the Zafraniya blast, another bomb tore into a busy intersection outside a popular ice cream store in the mainly Shi’ite district of Sadr City, killing 16 and wounding 40 more, police and hospital officials said.
“I was sitting in the cafe when I felt a huge spark like electricity in my eyes, and a huge explosion. After that I woke up in hospital with injuries to my arms and shrapnel in my back,” said Amjad Saad, 23, a college student.
No group claimed responsibility for yesterday’s bombings and shootings, but a local al Qaeda affiliate and other Sunni Islamist groups have carried out at least one major assault a month since the last American troops left in December.
Al Qaeda’s local wing, the Islamic State of Iraq, says it has begun a new offensive against mainly Shi’ite targets, and security experts say it has benefited from cash and morale thanks to the inflow of fighters into neighbouring Syria.
Security had been tightened in Baghdad ahead of the end of Ramadan next week, a period when analysts had said they believed insurgents may attempt a major coordinated attack.
Earlier in the day, a car bomb killed six civilians and wounded 28 in the mainly Shi’ite Baghdad district of Husainiya, police and hospital sources said. Just north of the capital, in Taji, another car bomb killed one and wounded nine more people.
