On Sunday 25 August Baghdad and Baquba came under severe pressure as car bombs, roadside bombs and shootings killed at least 47 people.
The biggest of Sunday's attacks took place in central Baquba, 65 km northeast of Baghdad when a car bomb blew up near a housing complex, killing at least 11 people and wounding 34. Earlier attacks included the killing and mutilation of five soldiers in Qiyara town, some 290 km north of the Iraqi capital, when suspected militants ambushed two taxis taking soldiers from Baghdad to join their units in Mosul, ISF sources reported. An ISF source has reported that one of the cars escaped the ambush but the second one could not and the militants shot dead five soldiers and burned their bodies after they killed them, a fact that was corroborated by medical sources in the Mosul mortuary.
Earlier on Sunday, police said three people were killed and 15 wounded when a car bomb exploded in Balad, 80 km north of Baghdad and a further two people were shot dead near their homes in eastern Mosul.
Whilst Baquba bore the brunt of the violence on Sunday Baghdad and the southern surrounding provinces also came under significant attack. In separate incidences the ISF reported that seven people were also killed and 30 others were injured in two separate explosions in Madaen, about 30 km southeast of Baghdad and another two explosions took place in commercial areas in western and northern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 45. Eastern Baghdad was also subject to violence as a bomb stuck to a car killed three people and wounded four in a late attack on Sunday evening.
As the week progressed Baghdad became the focal point for a series of well-executed devastating attacks that resulted in the highest death toll of recent weeks. A series of car bombings and other attacks killed 86 people and wounded 263 extending the worst wave of sectarian bloodshed in Iraq for at least five years.
In Sadr City, an impoverished Shi'ite district in Baghdad's northeast, two car bombs killed seven people. The Interior Ministry described the attacks as "terrorist explosions" but said the number of people killed was only 20, with 213 wounded, which is unsurprising given their past efforts to cloud reporting and play down the threat posed by a deteriorating security situation. The Shi'ite-led Baghdad government has said that media reports exaggerate attacks in Iraq and that security forces have stopped many attempted bombings, however, Wednesday's violence was the worst since August 10, when nearly 80 people were killed during a religious holiday.
In other attacks on Wednesday, gunmen killed six members of the Government backed Sunni militia al-Schwa in an ambush on a checkpoint in Latifiya, a suburb 40 km south of Baghdad. Gunmen also stormed a Shi'ite home in the same area, killing six family members.
In Kadhimiya, a neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad, two roadside bombs and one car bomb killed five people and wounded nearly 30 and four soldiers were killed and five were wounded in Madaen, southeast of Baghdad, by a roadside bomb which targeted an Iraqi army patrol who were on a routine road move.
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