Sat Oct 12, 2013 23:05:00
At least 14 people have been killed and 31 others wounded when a car bomb exploded in a busy street lined with shops in the Iraqi city of Samarra, police and medics say.
The blast in Samarra, north of Baghdad, came as people were shopping ahead of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, which begins on Tuesday in some Islamic countries.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. However, al-Qaeda linked militants seeking to cause maximum casualties frequently bomb places in Iraq where crowds of people gather, including shopping districts, markets, cafes and mosques.
Violence in the country has reached a level not seen since 2008, when Iraq was just emerging from a brutal sectarian conflict.
This year's spike in violence, which has included a number of sectarian attacks, has raised fears of a relapse into the kind of intense bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people.
The latest unrest takes the number of people killed so far this month to more than 270, and to over 4,950 since the beginning of the year, according to the figures based on security and medical sources.
RA/HH
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