A surge of violent incidents in Iraq on Sunday claimed 10 lives and wounded 40 others in Baghdad and other cities.

 

In one of the deadliest bombing in a busy parking lot of the Shorjah area in the northern oil-city of Kirkuk, at least eight people were killed and 25 others injured in a car bombing explosion, a local police source said.

 

 

The blast occurred at about 3 PM (1200 GMT) in the Shorjaarea, in which dozens of nearby shops, buildings and civilian cars were also destroyed by the blast, Colonel Salih Muhammad told Xinhua by telephone.

 

The ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad, has witnessed increasing tension, since the collapse of Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, as Arab and Turkmen population in the city are fighting Kurdish efforts to join the city to their autonomous region just to the north.

 

In Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Kadhmiya, police said that at least two people were killed and 13 others injured in another car bomb explosion.

 

 

In Baya'a neighborhood, in southwestern the capital, police source said that two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a passing US patrol in the al-Shariqa intersection in the afternoon.

 

However, the US military did not confirm the incident yet.

 

Further northeast of Baghdad, seven Sunni and Shiite chieftains from the volatile province of Diyala were abducted by unknown gunmen in the Husseiniyah neighborhood after meeting top officials in the office of the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an official from the provincial media office said.

 

 

These tribal leaders came to the al-Maliki's office to discuss the national reconciliation efforts, the source added. Diyala province, which stretches from the eastern edges of Baghdad to the Iranian border to the east, has been the hot bed of insurgency and sectarian violence since the US-led invasion in 2003.

 

Meanwhile, an anonymous police source said that Iraqi police patrols have found, early in the day, five unidentified bodies indifferent neighborhoods of Baghdad.

 

The bullet-riddled bodies were bounded and showing signs of torture, the source added.

 

 

(Xinhua News Agency October 29, 2007)