| Car bomb blast, shooting at lawyers’ house kill 19 in Iraq |
BAGHDAD A car bomb in Iraq and the shooting of a lawyer and his family left 19 people dead on Wednesday, after Al Qaeda warned it would target lawyers and retake territory in a new campaign.
The attacks were the latest in an apparent spike in unrest since the beginning of the Holy Month of Ramadan, bringing to 88 the number of people killed so far this month.
In the deadliest incident on Wednesday, a vehicle packed with explosives ripped through a group of people during a commemoration ceremony in Al Tanmiyah village, around 50km southeast of Baghdad.
The 6.45pm attack killed 11 people and wounded 20 others, according to a police lieutenant-colonel and a medic, both of who declined to be identified. Most of the victims were men, the officials said.
It also sparked a large fire in a nearby market and damaged adjacent houses.
Earlier on Wednesday, gunmen shot dead a lawyer, his judicial investigator son and six of their family members in a town north of Baghdad. The shooting took place at the home of Khayrallah Shati, a lawyer in the town of Baiji, 200km north of the capital, killing him, his wife, five sons and another relative who was staying with them.
“Khayrallah Shati, his wife and five sons, and a family guest staying with them, were killed early this morning in Baiji,” a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
“Gunmen raided his house and opened fire on the family. Initial reports are that this is a terrorist attack, but the investigation is still ongoing.”
The officer said one of Shati’s sons was a judicial investigator. An official in the main hospital in Salaheddin provincial capital Tikrit said the facility received eight bodies - seven men and a woman - all with multiple gunshot wounds.
Al Qaeda’s front group the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) said in July that it was launching a “new military campaign aimed at recovering territory.”
An earlier message posted on various jihadist forums said the ISI would begin targeting judges and prosecutors, and try to help its prisoners break out of jails.
Agence France-Presse
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