A suicide bomber, who penetrated layers of security, blew himself up in the busy lobby of a leading Baghdad hotel on Monday, killing at least 12 people, including a US-allied tribal sheik, police reported.
The attack, in which 21 others were wounded, was just one in a surge of five suicide and other bombings on Monday that killed at least 32 people across Iraq. In an equally deadly attack, a suicide truck bomber targeted an Iraqi police station shared with US troops in Beiji,  killing nine people. Five American soldiers suffered minor wounds.
The bombing at the high-rise Mansour Hotel, on the west bank of the Tigris River in central Baghdad, struck at about noon as the lobby bustled with members of news media organizations headquartered at the hotel and other guests, witnesses said.A man wearing a belt of explosives walked into the lobby, approached the reception desk and detonated his bomb, police reported. Police said the dead included hotel resident Fassal al-Guood, a Ramadi tribal sheik and former governor of Anbar province who was a leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, which has partnered with US and Iraqi officials.
Besides nine dead, the truck bombing at the Beiji wounded at least 21 others, police and medical officials reported. About 45 minutes later, another suicide car bomb exploded at a joint US-Iraqi army checkpoint in central Siniyah, nine miles west of Beiji, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding three others.
Earlier, a suicide car bomber struck a checkpoint near the governor’s offices in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Hillah, killing eight people and wounding 31. The fifth bomb was in a parked car that exploded in the center of the northern city of Mosul, killing one civilian and wounding 20 others.