Bombings kill 15 people across Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) — A series of bombings across Iraq killed 15 people Saturday, including a soldier and his entire family, authorities said.
Police said that the day's deadliest attack struck Muqdadiyah, when two explosions targeting the home of a soldier killed him, his wife, his two daughters and two sons as they slept. The blasts leveled the home.
Muqdadiyah is about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in a commercial street in the capital's western neighborhood of Amariyah, killing four people and wounding 12, police said. Another bomb blast near an outdoor market in the Sadiyah neighborhood killed two shoppers and wounded six, officials said.
Saturday night, a car bomb exploded near homes in a Turkomen neighborhood in the town of Tuz Khormato, killing three people and wounding five, Mayor Shalal Abdoul said.
Tuz Khormato, an ethnically mixed city of Arabs, Kurds and ethnic Turkomen, is 210 kilometers (130 miles) north of Baghdad.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualties for all attacks. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to journalists.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Saturday's attacks. But multiple bombings against civilians and security forces are frequently the work of the al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq, which has been emboldened by successes of its fellow militants in the civil war next door in Syria and by widespread Sunni anger at the Shiite-led government.
Since late December, members of Iraq's al-Qaida branch — known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — have taken over parts of Ramadi, the capital of the largely Sunni province of Anbar. They also control the center of the nearby city of Fallujah. Government forces and allied tribes have been trying to wrest control back from the militants since.
