Three suicide bombings north of Baghdad kill 23

Three suicide car bombings killed 23 people in northern Iraq today, including a top municipal council leader plus a bodyguard of Iraq’s Kurdish deputy prime minister, officials said.

Continuing violence during the past days has also 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 at least 797 people since the April 28 announcement of Iraq’s new Shiite-led government, according to an Associated Press count.