BAGHDAD —
At least 32 people were killed in bomb and gun attacks across Iraq on Thursday, police and medics said.
In the town of Muqdadiya, 80 km (50 miles) northeast of the capital, 11 people were killed when a car bomb exploded at a wake. As survivors gathered to evacuate the wounded, a suicide bomber blew himself up, police said.
Gunmen opened fire on two checkpoints guarding oil installations on the road between Baiji, 180 km north of the capital, and Haditha, killing a further 11, police said.
The violence is part of a sustained campaign of militant attacks since the start of the year that has prompted warnings of wider conflict in a country where ethnic Kurds, Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable power-sharing compromise.
Three roadside bombs targeted police patrols in the city of Tikrit, killing three policemen. Earlier in the day, seven policemen were killed in attacks in the western province of Anbar, Iraq's Sunni heartland.
Insurgents have been recruiting from Iraq's Sunni minority, which resents Shi'ite domination since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which is fast spreading into a region-wide proxy war, drawing in Shi'ite and Sunni fighters from Iraq and beyond to fight on opposite sides of the conflict.
In the town of Muqdadiya, 80 km (50 miles) northeast of the capital, 11 people were killed when a car bomb exploded at a wake. As survivors gathered to evacuate the wounded, a suicide bomber blew himself up, police said.
Gunmen opened fire on two checkpoints guarding oil installations on the road between Baiji, 180 km north of the capital, and Haditha, killing a further 11, police said.
The violence is part of a sustained campaign of militant attacks since the start of the year that has prompted warnings of wider conflict in a country where ethnic Kurds, Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable power-sharing compromise.
Three roadside bombs targeted police patrols in the city of Tikrit, killing three policemen. Earlier in the day, seven policemen were killed in attacks in the western province of Anbar, Iraq's Sunni heartland.
Insurgents have been recruiting from Iraq's Sunni minority, which resents Shi'ite domination since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which is fast spreading into a region-wide proxy war, drawing in Shi'ite and Sunni fighters from Iraq and beyond to fight on opposite sides of the conflict.
