Wave of bomb attacks in Iraq kill 38

A series of separate bomb attacks in Iraq have killed at least 38 people.

A series of separate bomb attacks in Iraq have killed at least 38 people.

Iraqis youths look at a bus damaged by a bomb, killing 11 people outside Baquba today. Photograph: Reuters
Iraqis youths look at a bus damaged by a bomb, killing 11 people outside Baquba today. Photograph: Reuters

The latest attacks add to pressure on rival factions in the country's new government to agree on interior and defence ministers who can tackle the violence.

In the bloodiest of at least nine incidents, a car bomb aimed at an Iraqi army patrol killed 12 people, most of them students, in a Sunni Muslim district of northern Baghdad, police said.

A roadside bomb killed at least eight people in a Shia area in the city's northwest.

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Elsewhere, 11 people died when a bomb planted on a bus taking labourers to work went off in the small town of Khalis in a volatile area some 80 kilometres north of the capital, police said.

An Iranian exiled opposition group said the dead were employees coming to its base in the area.

Noting that Iran's foreign minister was in Baghdad last week, the People's Mujahideen Organisation blamed Tehran's Shia Islamist allies running the new Iraqi government.

Britain's Defence Ministry reported that two British soldiers were killed in a suspected roadside bomb attack in the southern city of Basra yesterday evening, bringing the British death toll since the US-led 2003 invasion to 113.

Two British soldiers also suffered minor wounds in the blast.

Basra had been relatively calm but five British

soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash on May 6th, and a roadside bomb killed two others a week later.