Suicide bomb blast kills 27 at Internet cafe in Baghdad

[NBCNews]

  By Kareem Raheem, ReutersA suicide bomber blew himself inside a Baghdad cafe popular with young  people using the Internet, killing a least 27 and wounding dozens more  in one of the worst single attacks in the Iraqi capital this year.

Follow @NBCNewsWorldThe  late evening blast in west Baghdad came just two days before provincial  elections that will be a major test of Iraq's political stability more  than a year after the last American troops left the country.

Police  and witnesses said emergency workers struggled to extricate victims  trapped when the blast collapsed part of the building that also housed a  shopping center below the Dubai cafe which was on the third floor.

"It  was a huge blast," a police official at the scene said. "Part of the  building fell in and debris hit people shopping in the mall below."  


Ten  years after the U.S.-led invasion, Sunni Islamists linked to al Qaeda  carry out at least one major attack a month, but insurgents have stepped  up suicide attacks since the start of the year as part of a campaign to  provoke confrontation between the country's Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims.

More  than 30 people were killed in a series of bombings across Iraq on  Monday and more than a dozen election candidates have been killed in the  run-up to the vote.

Security officials have been expecting more  attacks before Saturday's ballot for provincial councils that will be a  measure of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's political muscle before the  parliamentary vote in 2014.

A surge in violence in Iraq has  accompanied the political crisis in the Shiite premier's government,  where Shiite, Sunni and ethnic Kurds share posts in a fragile  power-sharing deal that has been mostly paralyzed since U.S. troops left  in December 2011.

Al Qaeda's local wing, Islamic State of Iraq,  has said it will keep up attacks and security officials say the group  is gaining ground and recruits in the western desert bordering Syria,  thanks in part to a boost from the flow of insurgents and funds into the  neighboring country's war.

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