(BAGHDAD) — Four car bombs killed over a dozen people in sprawling Shiite neighborhoods of the Iraqi capital and in a northern city on Thursday morning, while gunmen cut down the brother of a Sunni lawmaker, officials said. Baghdad police said the first blast struck a bus and taxi stop around rush hour in the eastern Sadr City neighborhood. Nine people were killed, including a 7-year old child, and 16 were wounded, two officers said. Another car bomb hit a small market at a taxi stop in the eastern suburb of Kamaliya, killing three civilians and wounding 14 others, they said. In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide attacker rammed his car into an army check point, killing two soldiers and wounding three others, another police officer said. The attack came just after a car bomb wounded two civilians, he said. Mosul is located 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad. (MORE: U.N. Says April 2013 Deadliest Month in Iraq Since June 2008) In Baghdad's southwestern neighborhood of Baiyaa, drive-by shooters shot and killed a brother of a Sunni lawmaker and wounded two of his guards, two other police officers said. Four medical officials in a nearby hospital confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief reporters. The attack followed a wave of bombings on Wednesday that struck in mainly in Shiite neighborhoods, killing 33 people. At least seven of them died in Sadr City when a bomb in a parked car detonated at a bus stop. The spike in violence comes amid growing tensions between the Shiite-led government and Iraq's Sunni minority over what they consider second-class treatment. A bloody government crackdown on militants last month in a protest camp in the country's north fueled the tension. Iraq's embattled Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed sectarian tension for the latest attacks. "We have to know that today's bloodshed is the result of sectarian hatred and also the result of a stirring up of these sectarian tensions," al-Maliki said(http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=world.time.com&blog=19871253&post=86699&subd=timeglobalspin&ref=&feed=1)
Via: TIME GlobalSpin