42 killed, 63 wounded in violence in Iraq

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42 killed, 63 wounded in violence in Iraq

(Xinhua) 08:07, September 30, 2013

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BAGHDAD, Sept. 29 -- At least 42 people were killed and 63 wounded in violent attacks in Iraq on Sunday, government sources said.

Up to 30 people were killed and about 40 wounded in a suicide bombing attack against a mosque in Mussaiyb town, south of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Sunday, police said.

A suicide bomber blew up himself before the sunset at a funeral held at al-Hussien mosque in Mussaiyb, some 50 km south of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, up to six people were killed in a series of explosions in the city of Arbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan on Sunday, a Kurdish official said.

"The situation is under control of the security forces after they killed four terrorists and two suicide car bombers," Nozad Hadi, the governor of Arbil, told reporters without giving the number of casualties among civilians.

Two people were killed and eight wounded when a car bomb went off in Husseiniyah district in the northeastern part of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In a separate incident, a sticky bomb attached to a civilian car detonated in Baghdad's southern district of Doura, seriously wounding the driver and destroying his car, the source said.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, gunmen shot dead two people in the volatile city of Maqdadiyah, some 100 km north east of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead a barber in front of his house in the western part of the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, while two people were wounded in a sticky bomb explosion in their car in western the city, the source said.

Separately, a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group fighter was killed and three wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint in west of Baquba, the source added.

The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq said earlier this month that almost 5,000 civilians were killed and 12,000 others injured in Iraq from January to August this year.