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Bombs, shootings kill 42 in Iraq

26 July 2013 02:41 (UTC +04:00)

All of the deadly incidents occurred on Thursday.

In Thursday’s deadliest attack, a car bomb killed 14 people in central Muqdadiya, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the capital Baghdad.

A bomb exploded in a garden in the Amiriya District of Baghdad where people had gathered for a wedding ceremony, killing four people.

In four other incidents in Baghdad, gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead four young men.

A roadside bomb killed three people in Madaen, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) southeast of Baghdad.

Gunmen shot dead a police officer in the northern city of Mosul, while a child was killed in a roadside bombing, and a civil servant was gunned down in the east of the city.

Earlier in the day, militants killed 14 Shia truck drivers and stolen their vehicles on a highway north of the capital. The militants summarily executed the truckers after checking their IDs and determining that they were Shia Muslims.

The incidents are the latest in a string of attacks across Iraq that have left more than 2,900 people dead since the beginning of April.

In the first 16 days of Ramadan, more than 400 people have lost their lives in violence across Iraq.

In an interview with Press TV on Monday, an international human rights lawyer said that foreign powers are attempting to fabricate and benefit from Shia-Sunni discord in Iraq and elsewhere, seeking to see the Muslim world weakened in the wake of such rifts.

“Who benefits is of course the key issue. It’s really not the people of Iraq, it’s not the Sunnis, it’s not the Shia[s]. It is external powers that want to exploit and create division. Those are the parties that benefit,” said Canada-based attorney Edward Corrigan.

“It’s certainly not the people in the region [that benefit from sectarian conflicts]; it’s not Iran; it’s not Iraq; it’s not the people of Syria, which are now witnessing the destruction of their state and where there has been attempts to provoke similar sectarian conflict in Lebanon,” he added.