The murderers are not forgetting Iraq

The Islamist murderers are not forgetting Iraq.

BAGHDAD -- Two suicide bombers, one in an explosives-laden car and the other on foot, struck a cluster of funeral tents packed with mourning families in a Shiite neighbourhood in Baghdad, the deadliest in a string of attacks around Iraq that killed at least 96 people on Saturday.

Three mourners

Thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violent attacks in recent months -- a level of bloodshed not seen since Iraq pulled back from the brink of civil war in 2008 -- despite appeals for restraint from Shiite and Sunni political leaders.

Less than two hours after the funeral attack, another car bomb blast struck a commercial street in the nearby Ur neighbourhood, killing nine people and wounding 14, according to police.

Gunmen later shot up a shop that has been discretely selling liquor in the largely Sunni neighbourhood of Azamiyah, killing four people, police said.

Earlier in the day, insurgents launched a suicide attack on a police commando headquarters in the city of Beiji, an oil refining centre 250 kilometres north of Baghdad. Guards managed to kill one suicide bomber, but the three others were able to set off their explosive belts inside the compound, killing seven policemen and wounding 21 others, police said.

In other violence, gunmen shot and killed two prison guards after storming their houses in a village near the restive city of Mosul early Saturday. Two soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their convoy in Mosul, which is 360 kilometres northwest of the Iraqi capital.

Meanwhile, the Kurds are busy setting up their own three province regional government, while the Shiites and Sunnis slaughter each other.

Saturday's violence came as voters in the northern Kurdish autonomous region cast ballots in local elections for the Kurdistan Regional Government's 111-seat legislature. Iraqi Kurds are looking to bolster their autonomy while insulating their increasingly prosperous enclave from the growing violence roiling the rest of the country.

More than 4,000 people have been killed in violent attacks between April and August, United Nations figures show. Another 493 have died so far in September, according to an Associated Press tally.