By Xinhua
Baghdad : The toll in the central Baghdad thoroughfare bombings has risen to 68, an interior ministry official said Friday.
“Our latest report about the casualties in Thursday’s bombings in Attar commercial street in Karrada is estimated at 68 deaths and 120 injured,” an interior ministry official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
On Thursday, a roadside bomb ripped through a busy thoroughfare in the Shia neighbourhood of Karrada in the central part of Baghdad at around 7.00 p.m.
When the security troops and civilians gathered at the blast site, a suicide bomber blew himself up among the crowd, the police said.
Insurgents used similar tactics in the past to attack security forces and members of the rival political parties.
On Friday morning, another suicide car bomb attack occurred in the northern city of Mosul when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a police station in central Baghdad, a police spokesman said.
The powerful blast killed four policemen and wounded 17 people. A portion of the police station and some neighbouring buildings were destroyed in the blast.
Except for the recent blasts, the security in Iraq has relatively improved, thanks to the surge of US troops, the uprising of Sunnis against Al Qaeda and ceasefire of the Shia militia.
The US military, however, warns that Al Qaeda still remains a threat to Iraqi security.