4 suicide attacks kill 71 across Iraq

Four suicide bombs killed at least 71 people in Iraq on Wednesday. In Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle among a crowd of mainly Shi’ite migrant labourers from southern Iraq who had gathered to look for work. Police said at least 33 people were killed and 80 wounded.

In the town of Hawija, southwest of the strategic oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a suicide bomber walked up to an Army recruitment centre and detonated an explosive belt, killing at least 32 people and wounding 34, hospital sources said. A third suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a police station in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, killing at least three civilians. A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol in the Mansour district of Baghdad killed two policemen and a civilian, officials at the Interior Ministry said.

Insurgents also kidnapped the Iraqi governor of the rebellious western province of Anbar and are demanding that his tribe release captured fighters loyal to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. —Reuters