Four bombings over two days leave more than 130 dead in Iraq

April 24, 2009

Four bombings in two days have left over 130 dead in Iraq, with at least as many injured. Al Jazeera reports that at least 60 were killed in the two explosions at a tomb in Baghdad today. Unlike yesterday's attacks, one of which was also in Baghdad, today's attacks happened in rapid succession.

Two gates of the Shia tomb were targeted shortly before the Friday prayer - a time at which it would be crowded. The BBC states the suicide bombers were two women.

According to police reports yesterday, at least 76 people were killed in the two separate suicide bombings that happened Thursday. A further 63 people were reported injured that day. Five children were among the casualties.

48 people were killed by a suicide bomber in a restaurant in the northeastern Iraqi town of Baquba. The other blast had occurred in Baghdad, when a suicide bomber detonated a belt full of explosives near a group of police officers giving supplies to Iraqis displaced by sectarian violence.

"It is a suicide bomber. Obviously that has the fingerprints of al-Qaeda," said a Baghdad security spokesman, Major-General Qassim Moussawi, commenting yesterdays attack.

Abdulnasir al-Muntasirbillah, the governor of Diyala, condemned the attacks. "Words can't express it. It is a dirty, cowardly terrorist act," he said yesterday.

Issam Salim, a witness to Thursday's Baghdad attack, described his experiences to the Associated Press: "I turned around as I fell to the ground and saw a big fire break out with black smoke. Women and children are crying from pain beside me in the hospital. Some of them suffered burns."