Iraq: Car bombs target police checkpoints, homes
Iraqi security forces set up checkpoints on streets leading to the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad on March 27, 2012.
As many as 32 people were killed in Iraq this morning after a series of car bombs went off at police checkpoints, and outside homes, Reuters reported.
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Officials said the deadliest attack took place in the town of Taji, 12 miles north of the capital Baghdad, where eight people died in three explosions. A further 22 people were reported wounded.
According to the BBC, the bombs were placed in parked cars near Shiite Muslim homes in the mainly Sunni town.
Meanwhile in the city of Kut, 95 miles south-east of Baghdad, four police officers died when a suicide bomber struck outside a police checkpoint.
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A separate bomb attack in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad killed at least one person, the Associated Press reported. The AP's death toll was 26 people, and it estimated that at least 94 people had been wounded in the series of attacks.
There were also bomb attacks reported in the town of Madain and the town of Balad Ruz, killing three Iraqis and two policeman respectively.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but both Reuters and the AP noted that the attacks bear the hallmark of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Violence in Iraq has escalated since US troops withdrew at the end of last year, with dozens of deaths in the past month alone.