32 killed, 96 wounded in wave of car bomb attacks in Baghdad

Up to 32 people were killed and 96 wounded in a series of car bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital on Saturday evening, an interior Ministry source said.

A booby-trapped car went off in New Baghdad district in the southeastern part of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding eight others, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In a separate incident, four people were killed, including a local leader of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group, in a car bomb explosion in al-Madain area, some 30 km southwest of Baghdad, the source said.

The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

Earlier, the police said that 24 people were killed and 88 injured in a spate of bomb attacks that targeted the predominantly Shiite districts of Karradah, New Baghdad, Tobji, Shurta al-Rabia, Mowasalat, Um al-Tuboul and Zaafaraniyah.

The attacks took place after the breaking of daily Ramadan fast as many people go out for shopping in Baghdad's popular markets or relax at coffee shops.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is sliding the country back toward a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.