50 killed, hundreds injured in Iraq attacks

At least 50 people were killed and hundreds wounded Thursday in a series of bomb and gun attacks across the Iraqi capital, police said.

The violence targeted predominantly Shia areas, in particular police officers and checkpoints, the BBC reported.

In the capital city of Baghdad, nine people were killed in two successive blasts in the central Karrada district. Outside the capital, at least two were killed in Baquba city.

No group claimed responsibility for the violence.

In the incidents around Baghdad, six people were killed after a car bomb blast in Shia-dominated Kadhimiya area.

Another six people were killed by gunmen at a police checkpoint in the Baghdad’s Sarafiya district.

At least two people died and five injured in an explosion in the western al-Mansour district.

In southern Baghdad, two people were killed while 10 wounded in two explosions in Dorat Abo Sheer area.

In another incident in southern Baghdad, an attack by assailants on a police patrol in Saidiya area left two people as killed and nine wounded.

Seven people, most of them policemen, suffered injuries in a blast in al-Madaen, south of Baghdad while five civilians were wounded in a bomb explosion in Taji, north of Baghdad.

There were also attacks in Mosul, Kirkuk and the province of Salahuddin.

Iraqi cities have been plagued by waves of deadly attacks including suicide bombings since the US troops pulled out of the country in December last year.