Baghdad: More than 65 people were killed in a triple bombing that targeted a tent filled with mourners in Baghdad’s Shiite stronghold of Sadr City on Saturday, police and medical sources said.
Police said a car bomb went off near the tent where a funeral was being held, a suicide bomber driving a car then blew himself up, and a third explosion followed as police, ambulances and firefighter were gathering at the scene.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, in which at least 100 others were wounded, medics said.
Distraught survivors attacked policemen and firefighters who tried to move them away from the scene, witnesses said. Puddles of blood surrounded the tent.
The Sadr City blasts came a day after two bombs exploded in a Sunni mosque north of Baghdad, killing 18 people.
Earlier on Saturday, four attackers killed six officers in an assault on a police station in Baiji, 180 km north of Baghdad.
Violence in Iraq has surged this year to levels not seen since 2008, raising fears of a return to the all-out sectarian conflict that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed thousands of people.
The United Nations said that 1,057 people were killed in July, the deadliest month in more than five years in Iraq, while at least 916 civilians were killed in August. More than 4,300 people have been reported killed since the beginning of the year.
— Agencies
