Baghdad: A car bomb ripped through a crowd outside a hospital in Iraq's restive northern city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, killing a mother and her newborn baby and wounding 33 other people, police said.
"The car bombing outside the hospital killed a 35-year-old mother and her baby daughter. She had given birth this morning and was leaving the hospital," said Abdul Zinalabedine, a police general in Kirkuk.
"Thirty-three others were wounded, among them a police captain and three other policemen," he added.
Earlier, Kirkuk Hospital's Dr Nabil Hamdi had confirmed that a body of a woman had been received, along with many wounded, three of them seriously. The newborn baby who died had been among the critically wounded.
Major Salam Zanganeh of the provincial police said the blast had caused damage to the hospital and several nearby buildings.
The oil-rich, multi-ethnic and multi-religious province of Kirkuk and its eponymous capital are especially violence prone.
A car bomb Friday wounded 20 people as it ripped through a Kurdish neighbourhood in Kirkuk.
In other incidents across Iraq, seven people were wounded by three separate homemade bombs on Wednesday in Baghdad, including a policeman.
And on Tuesday, gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped five men in northern Nineveh province, all members of the minority Yazidi sect, a police source said. The gunmen blocked three cars carrying Yazidi families, abducted the men and left women and children, the official said.
Violence across Iraq has fallen dramatically since its peak in 2006 and 2007, but bomb attacks and kidnappings are still common.
