Bombs kill nine and wound 54 in northern Iraq

A car bomb and a suicide bomber killed at least nine people and wounded 54 in northern Iraq on Saturday, police and medical sources said, in the latest of a wave of attacks in crowded public places. The bombings took place in the town of Tuz Khurmato, 170 km (100 miles) north of the capital Baghdad, in a region which both the central government and autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan claim as theirs. The first bomb detonated in a car in a busy market near a Shi'ite mosque after prayers and was quickly followed by a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest, the sources said. Iraqi authorities are struggling with the worst violence in at least five years and say Sunni Muslim insurgents linked to al Qaeda are to blame for most of the attacks, which have killed hundreds each month since the beginning of 2013.

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