Baghdad - Several bombings in various Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq on Saturday killed at least seven people and wounded several, according to police reports. One of the bombs targeted pilgrims on their way to the sacred city of Karbala, killing two and wounding eight. The bombing came ahead of the Shiite Ashura day of mourning Sunday that has drawn many to the town, located about 100 kilometres southwest of the capital Baghdad.
In the ethnically diverse, politically tense and violence-prone northern town of Mosul, a bomb hit the motorcade of a politician visiting the area, a police official quoted by the Aswat Al-Iraq news agency said.
Meanwhile, two people were killed in tribal clashes in the rural southern area of Amara, according to reports.
A policeman was killed and several civilians wounded by a bombing in Tikrit, according to a police official in the area located some 140 kilometres from Baghdad. Tikrit is at the northern end of the country's so-called "Sunni Triangle" and has seen waves of heavy violence in the past.
Near Abu Ghreib, just west of Baghdad, a tribal leader was killed by a roadside bomb placed outside his home, security officers said.
Police said a man whose identity was unclear, was killed when a bomb exploded near his home in the centre of Falluja in Anbar province, in Iraq's the Sunni heartland.
Several people, including civilians were injured in blasts in Kirkuk and Baghdad, which apparently targeted police.
Anbar, like some other Sunni provinces, was formerly the site of some of the worst fighting between insurgents and US and Iraqi forces. Relative calm returned to the city after Awakening (Sahwa) Councils, made up of insurgents who switched sides and allied themselves with with their former enemies, took charge.
