Baghdad bombings target Shia funeral

At least 65 people have been killed in car bombings targeting a funeral in the Iraqi capital, officials said.

Police said a first car bomb went off near a funeral tent for a Shia man in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City on Saturday afternoon. A suicide bomber driving a car then blew himself up near the tent, and a third explosion came as police, ambulances and firefighters were gathering at the scene.

The officials said women and children were among the dead, and that at least 60 people were wounded.

The first explosion set several nearby cars on fire, sending a towering plume of thick black smoke over the city.

Earlier in the day a suicide assault on a police headquarters and other attacks in northern Iraq killed 11 members of the security forces.

Police officials said four suicide bombers stormed a headquarters for police commandos in the city of Beiji, killing seven policemen and wounding 21 others.

Guards killed one suicide bomber while the three other bombers were able to set off their explosive belts inside the compound, they said.

Beiji, a centre for oil refining, is 250km north of Baghdad.

Soldiers killed

In other violence, gunmen shot and killed two prison guards after storming their houses in a village near the city of Mosul early on Saturday.

Also in Mosul, two soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their convoy.

Saturday’s violence comes as voters in the northern Kurdish autonomous region cast ballots in local elections for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s 111-seat legislature.

Iraqi Kurds are looking to bolster their autonomy while insulating their increasingly prosperous enclave from the growing violence roiling the rest of the country.

Violence has surged this year to levels not seen since 2008, when Iraq was emerging from a sectarian conflict that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed thousands of people.

With the latest incidents, more than 500 people have been killed so far this month and more than 4,300 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP news agency figures based on security and medical sources.