Nearly 70 killed in attacks across Iraq

 BAGHDAD--Nearly 70 people were killed and dozens more were wounded Monday in a string of violent attacks around Iraq, one of the deadliest days in the country so far this year, police and government officials said.
In the worst incident, two bombs exploded in a busy jewelry market in the city center of Kut, killing at least 34 and injuring more than 50, officials said.

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Car bombs also detonated in the northern city of Kirkuk and the pricey Mansour district of Baghdad. Elsewhere, AK-47 wielding assailants targeted leaders in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad.
The attacks came after a period of relative quiet in the country, which had descended as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began in early August.
Lt. Col. Hachem Neama Abbas, an Iraqi army commander in Baghdad, said the military had been bracing for a new round of violence after the calm. The attacks, he said, are proof that insurgents still posed a threat to the country’s stability. They also raise questions about the Iraqi government’s ability to maintain security as American troops prepare to leave the country by December.
“This wave of explosions and attacks is evidence that al-Qaeda is still effective,” Abbas said.
Iraq is debating whether or not to ask a small contingent of U.S. forces to stay past the deadline, but no official request has been made yet, U.S. officials have said.
The day’s worst violence happened in Kut, a large city in central Iraq about 150 miles from Baghdad. Insurgents detonated a bomb at about 8:30 a.m. in a crowded area near a jewelry market, according to Dhiaa Al Deen Al Aabudi, the city’s health director. About 10 minutes later, a car bomb detonated in the same place. In all 34 people were killed and about 70 injured, some critically.
In Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, 13 people, including four Iraqi army officers, were killed in a string of car bombs, explosives and shootings. A police official there said he believed the commanders of the group Sons of Iraq were targeted by insurgents.
Elsewhere, at least two were killed in a series of car bombings in Baghdad, and eight died in attacks on police facilities in Najaf and Karbala. Nine people died in Tikrit after two suicide bombings there, including one by a man dressed in a traffic police uniform who blew himself up at the main gate of the city’s counter-terrorism facility.
In Kirkuk, where a car bomb and an motorcycle rigged with explosives exploded outside a church Monday, killing one, the provincial governor, Najmaldin Karim, called on American troops to stay in the country past the deadline.
Special correspondents Asaad Majeed in Baghdad, Sa’ad Sarhan in Najaf, Othman Almukhtar in Anbar province and Hassan Alshimmari in Diyala province contributed to this report.

Src  : Washingtonpost