A bomb in a car exploded outside the offices where national ID cards and passports are issued and two other blasts went off as emergency services arrived at the site. AGENCIES
Multiple bomb attacks at a passport and identity card office in Iraq’s shrine city of Karbala killed nine people and wounded 99 others on Sunday, AFP reported the province’s health director as saying. “The bomb attacks in Karbala today have so far killed nine people and there are 99 people wounded,” said Alaa Hammudi, head of Karbala province’s health department. “This toll could still rise.” A bomb in a car exploded outside the offices where national ID cards and passports are issued and two other blasts went off as emergency services arrived at the site. “When people and security personnel were busy evacuating the dead and the wounded, another two explosions hit the place, causing more casualties,” Reuters reported a Kerbala police official as saying. Kerbala, a major Shi’ite holy city 80 km (50 miles) southwest of the capital Baghdad, has often been attacked in the past by Sunni Islamist insurgents targeting Shi’ite pilgrims who flock to the city’s religious sites. A suicide bomber targeting pilgrims on their way to Kerbala killed four people and wounded 17 others on Thursday. Violence has eased since the height of sectarian strife in 2006-2007, but insurgents tied to al-Qaeda and Shi’ite militias still carry out almost daily attacks that are testing Iraq’s government as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw at the end of the year.
