Deadly bomb blasts strike targets across Baghdad

At least 67 people were killed and nearly 200 were injured in Baghdad on Thursday in a series of coordinated bomb blasts across the Iraqi capital amid rising fears of an increase in sectarian violence following a US troop withdrawal.

By William EDWARDS (video)
News Wires (text)

AFP - Two more attacks in Baghdad and a shooting at an army checkpoint in the main northern city of Mosul raised the death toll from violence in Iraq on Thursday to 67, health and security officials said.

A total of 60 people were killed and 183 wounded in more than a dozen attacks in the Iraqi capital, health ministry spokesman Ziad Tariq said.

Separately, a family of five was slaughtered in the restive central city of Baquba and two soldiers were gunned down in Mosul, police and hospital officials said.

The Baghdad attacks mostly coincided with the morning rush hour, though three people were killed in separate evening bombings at a cafe and market in the capital, Tariq sid.

The violence comes with Iraqi politicians at loggerheads over a warrant issued for the arrest of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanding that Kurdish authorities hand over the Sunni Arab leader, who is holed up in their autonomous region.

Hashemi denies the charges.

Maliki has also called for his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlak, who belongs to the same Iraqiya bloc as Hashemi, to be sacked after he described the Shiite-led government as a "dictatorship".

Iraqiya, meanwhile, has boycotted parliament and the cabinet, and Maliki has threatened to replace their ministers in the year-old unity government.