Eight killed in Iraq bomb attacks

A total of eight people were killed and some 43 wounded in bombing attacks across Iraq Sunday, police said.

At least one civilian was killed and nine wounded in a car bomb explosion in Mahmoudiyah town, some 30 km south of the Iraq's capital Baghdad, an interior ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In a separate incident, two car bombs went off at a parking lot in the central part of the city of Hillah, the capital of Babil province, about 100 km south of Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding 15 others, according to a police source.

Meanwhile, two car bombs exploded in the city of Diwaniyah, the capital of Qadsiyah province, some 180 km south of Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding 18 others, a provincial police source told Xinhua.

Elsewhere, a civilian was killed and another wounded in the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, when a roadside bomb went off near a convoy of vehicles.

The vehicles were carrying people mourning the deaths of another car bomb attack at an outdoor market in the city Saturday evening, which reportedly killed 14 and wounded 22.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has said that almost 6,000 civilians were killed and over 14,000 others injured in Iraq from January to September this year.