Suicide attacks and drive-by shootings kill 34 across Iraq

Paul Garwood, Baghdad

Continuing violence during the past days also has claimed the lives of three children, a US soldier and a Sunni Muslim cleric, underscoring the rampant, random nature of an insurgency that has killed almost 800 people since the April 28 announcement of Iraq’s new Shi’ite-led government, according to an Associated Press count. Twenty people were killed as a wide swathe of northern Iraq was hit by three suicide bombings within an hour.

A suicide bomber struck a restaurant in Tuz Khormato, 50 miles south of the northern city of Kirkuk, during breakfast hours yesterday, killing at least 12 people, including a bodyguard of a deputy prime minister, and wounding 40, according to the Iraqi Defence Ministry and police.