2 bomb blasts kill 24 in Iraq

Associated Press

BAGHDAD

A bomb hidden inside a pickup truck loaded with vegetables exploded in a market north of Baghdad, the deadlier of two vehicle bombings that killed 24 people in Iraq on Thursday.

The blasts in the city of Samarra and the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib are the latest in a seemingly unrelenting wave of violence pounding Iraq a decade after the U.S.-led invasion. They follow a spate of car bombings and other attacks a day earlier that killed at least 82.

The pickup-truck bomb responsible for most of Thursday’s deaths tore through a market in Samarra, killing 18 and wounding 32, according to police.

Samarra is a largely Sunni Muslim city that is home to a revered Shiite shrine. The 2006 bombing of the gold-domed al-Askari shrine by Sunni militants unleashed widespread sectarian bloodshed in what would come to be seen as the darkest chapter of the war.

Another car bomb went off Thursday in Abu Ghraib, on the western outskirts of Baghdad, killing six and wounding 15, according to police. Abu Ghraib is the site of the prison made infamous by prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel after the 2003 invasion.