Bomb attacks in Baghdad, Mosul kill 30

BAGHDAD - Blasts at Baghdad's police academy and in the northern city of Mosul killed 30 people and wounded dozens more yesterday…

BAGHDAD - Blasts at Baghdad's police academy and in the northern city of Mosul killed 30 people and wounded dozens more yesterday, hours after a roadside bomb wounded a senior Iraqi official, police said.

Violence has fallen sharply over the past year as successive security crackdowns have dealt insurgent groups heavy blows. However, officials say militants are now concentrating their efforts on attention-grabbing attacks ahead of elections next year. The attacks seemed to be aimed at reigniting sectarian bloodshed between minority Sunni Arabs and Shias.

People were queuing at the back entrance of the police academy in east Baghdad to enrol when a car bomb exploded, followed minutes later by a suicide bomb attack, police said.

Fifteen Iraqi policemen or police recruits were killed and 45 other people were wounded, some of them police, the US military said.

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Shortly after the Baghdad attacks, police said a suicide car bomber and a car bomb killed 15 people and wounded 37 in Mosul, which officials say is the last holdout for al-Qaeda and other insurgents who once controlled swathes of Iraq.

The attack in Mosul targeted an Iraqi police and US military joint patrol, police said. The US military said no US troops were casualties of the attack. Mosul's main hospital said it had received 15 bodies. - (Reuters)