<p>Eight people were also killed by bombs in the Sunni west of the country. <br />Seven blasts hit different areas of the Iraqi capital around the time of Muslim prayers, mostly near Shi’ite mosques and at a marketplace, an interior ministry source said. Around 112 people were wounded. <br /><br />“Targeting prayers in areas with a certain majority,” Baghdad security spokesman Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi said, referring to Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim majority, “is a revenge for the losses suffered by al-Qaeda. <br /><br />“We expect such terrorist acts to continue.” <br />Last Sunday, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of its affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, were killed in a raid in a rural area northwest of Baghdad by Iraqi and US forces. <br />In Friday’s attacks, at least 21 people were killed and more were wounded when three bombs exploded in populated Sadr City slum. <br />Another bomb killed at least 11 and wounded 17 near a Shi’ite mosque in al-Ameen district in southeastern Baghdad. An earlier car bomb killed three people near a Shi’ite mosque in the northwestern neighbourhood of al-Hurriya, police said. <br /><br />Seven of family killed<br />Hours earlier, seven members of one family were killed in a series of blasts in Khalidiya, a town in Iraq’s turbulent western province of Anbar 83 km west of Baghdad. One police officer died trying to defuse a bomb. <br />The mainly Sunni province of Anbar has been relatively quiet since tribal leaders in 2006 started turning on Sunni Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda who had once dominated it. But insurgents continue to operate in the vast desert province. <br />“At four in the morning, I heard a movement behind my house and found some barrels nearby, so I took my family out of the house,” said Fadhil Salih, a judge at the Khalidiya courthouse. <br /><br />“An hour later the bomb went off and destroyed my house but, thank God, there were no casualties in my family,” Salih said. <br />At least 10 people were wounded in the blasts, including two policemen. Authorities imposed a ban on vehicles and motorbikes in Khalidiya after the blasts. <br />Revenge attacks<br />Iraqi officials say they have been expecting revenge attacks from Sunni Islamist insurgents after security forces scored a number of victories against al-Qaeda in the past month. <br /><br />The strike against al Qaeda’s Iraq leadership has been accompanied by a string of smaller battlefield victories in which more than 300 suspected al-Qaeda operatives have been arrested and 19 killed, according to US and Iraqi officials. <br />Overall violence in Iraq has fallen in two years as the sectarian bloodshed that followed the 2003 US-led invasion faded, but tensions were stoked last month after a national election that produced no clear winner. Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s bloc came a close second to a cross-sectarian alliance backed by the once-dominant minority Sunni community.</p>
<p>Eight people were also killed by bombs in the Sunni west of the country. <br />Seven blasts hit different areas of the Iraqi capital around the time of Muslim prayers, mostly near Shi’ite mosques and at a marketplace, an interior ministry source said. Around 112 people were wounded. <br /><br />“Targeting prayers in areas with a certain majority,” Baghdad security spokesman Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi said, referring to Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim majority, “is a revenge for the losses suffered by al-Qaeda. <br /><br />“We expect such terrorist acts to continue.” <br />Last Sunday, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of its affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, were killed in a raid in a rural area northwest of Baghdad by Iraqi and US forces. <br />In Friday’s attacks, at least 21 people were killed and more were wounded when three bombs exploded in populated Sadr City slum. <br />Another bomb killed at least 11 and wounded 17 near a Shi’ite mosque in al-Ameen district in southeastern Baghdad. An earlier car bomb killed three people near a Shi’ite mosque in the northwestern neighbourhood of al-Hurriya, police said. <br /><br />Seven of family killed<br />Hours earlier, seven members of one family were killed in a series of blasts in Khalidiya, a town in Iraq’s turbulent western province of Anbar 83 km west of Baghdad. One police officer died trying to defuse a bomb. <br />The mainly Sunni province of Anbar has been relatively quiet since tribal leaders in 2006 started turning on Sunni Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda who had once dominated it. But insurgents continue to operate in the vast desert province. <br />“At four in the morning, I heard a movement behind my house and found some barrels nearby, so I took my family out of the house,” said Fadhil Salih, a judge at the Khalidiya courthouse. <br /><br />“An hour later the bomb went off and destroyed my house but, thank God, there were no casualties in my family,” Salih said. <br />At least 10 people were wounded in the blasts, including two policemen. Authorities imposed a ban on vehicles and motorbikes in Khalidiya after the blasts. <br />Revenge attacks<br />Iraqi officials say they have been expecting revenge attacks from Sunni Islamist insurgents after security forces scored a number of victories against al-Qaeda in the past month. <br /><br />The strike against al Qaeda’s Iraq leadership has been accompanied by a string of smaller battlefield victories in which more than 300 suspected al-Qaeda operatives have been arrested and 19 killed, according to US and Iraqi officials. <br />Overall violence in Iraq has fallen in two years as the sectarian bloodshed that followed the 2003 US-led invasion faded, but tensions were stoked last month after a national election that produced no clear winner. Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s bloc came a close second to a cross-sectarian alliance backed by the once-dominant minority Sunni community.</p>
