Ramadan violence rips through Iraq's mosques, cafes killing dozens

GlobalPost
The World

The holy month of Ramadan hasn’t stopped the violence in Iraq, with 11 people killed by a bomb blast on Saturday night near a Sunni mosque in Baghdad.

Authorities told the Associated Press that another 35 were wounded in the blast at the Khalid bin al-Walid mosque in the neighborhood of Dora.

"A bomb exploded while worshippers were leaving the mosque of Khalid Bin al-Walid. Bodies were thrown back by the power of the explosion," a Dora policeman told Reuters.

The attack comes on the heels of a roadside bomb explosion outside a café in the same area that killed nine and wounded 32 on Saturday.

North of Baghdad in Zahra, a suicide bomber inside a vehicle attacked a Shia funeral, killing five people.

Violence in Iraq is again reaching epic proportions, with more than 2,500 killed this year and over 330 alone in July, Agence France-Presse said.

In several other attacks throughout Iraq on Saturday, eight people died and another dozen were wounded. Included in that were gunmen crossing the Syrian-Iraqi border where they clashed with guards there.

In that cross-border battle, one person died and five were injured.

Iraq's minority Sunni Muslims are at odds with the majority Shias, though no group claimed responsibility for the bombings that according to various sources killed at least 21 people, possibly 23 on Saturday. 

One of the worst attacks this month came on Friday when 31 people died after a bomb exploded near a café in Kirkuk, Reuters said.

Despite all the deaths and injuries, unrest in Iraq isn’t near its 2006 peak when it wasn’t uncommon for 3,000 casualties in a month, Reuters said. 

The monitoring group Iraq Body Count says attacks have so far killed 334 civilians in July.

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