BAGHDAD: Six explosions hit Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens more, the most deadly attacks on the Iraqi capital in more than a month.
The blasts, including a truck bomb that exploded in a busy market area, broke weeks a relative quiet in Baghdad just as the country's fragile government shared among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs wrangles to end a political crisis that has threatened to reignite sectarian tensions.
In the largest blast, a bomber detonated a vegetable delivery truck packed with explosives near a restaurant in a market, killing at least nine people and wounding 27 more in the mainly Shi'ite Shula district in northeastern Baghdad.
"The pickup truck came into the market and the driver left it saying he was going to get people to unload the vegetables," said Haider Fadhil, one of the wounded. "It was a huge explosion, I was knocked out and woke up in a car on my way to hospital."
A car bomb exploded near the vehicle of one of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's advisers, killing one civilian and wounding three people in western Baghdad, police and hospital officials said. It was not clear whether the adviser was targeted.
Two roadside bombs exploded in Amiriya district, killing one person and wounding four more while roadside bombs injured 14 more people in three other mixed neighbourhoods in western and southern parts of the capital.
In the last major attacks, 20 bombs hit cities and towns across Iraq in mid-April, killing 36 people, and raising fears of renewed sectarian strife. At least 15 people were killed in Baghdad by six bombs that hit mainly Shi'ite areas.
Violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the height of the sectarian slaughter triggered a few years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Suicide bombings and blasts claimed hundreds of lives daily in 2006-2007.
Since the last U.S. troops left Iraq in December, Sunni Islamists have often targeted local security forces and government buildings, but have also sought out Shi'ite victims in an attempt to stir sectarian tensions.AGENCIES