A parked vehicle blew up in a busy market in the city, 100 km (60 miles) north of the capital Baghdad, on Thursday, police and medical sources said.

A wave of violence began on April 23 when militants invaded security checkpoints near the town of Hawijah in north Iraq, sparking clashes in which 53 people were killed.

According to the United Nations, a total of 1,057 Iraqis, including 928 civilians, were killed and another 2,326 were wounded in terrorist attacks throughout the country in July.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry has said that militants have launched an open war in Iraq and they want to push the Middle Eastern country into chaos.

Hundreds of prisoners, most of them al-Qaeda linked terrorists, escaped from a prison in the capital, following a raid by a group of extremist gunmen on the facility in July.

Some 500 to 1000 prisoners escaped the Baghdad Central Prison (previously known as Abu Ghraib) after gunmen opened fire at the facility.

More than two years of war in neighboring Syria have aggravated deep-rooted sectarian divisions in Iraq.

NTJ/BA