Month Gets Deadlier in Iraq With New Wave of Bombings

A series of morning bomb explosions in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul today killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens in the latest eruption of violence rattling the country, officials said. Iraq is facing its most relentless wave of violence since the 2011 US military withdrawal, deepening fears that the country is heading back toward the widespread sectarian fighting that pushed it to the brink of civil war in the years after the invasion. More than 500 people have been killed in May. April was Iraq's deadliest month since June 2008, according to a UN tally that put last month's death toll at more than 700.

Most of today's blasts went off in Baghdad. Car bombs killed four in the northeastern Shiite neighborhood of Binouq, and three died in a bombing at a market selling spare car parts in central Baghdad, according to police. Officials also said a roadside bomb exploded on a police patrol in the largely Shiite central commercial district of Karradah, killing three. In Mosul, officers said a suicide bomber killed three when he blew himself up at a federal police checkpoint. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but blame is likely to fall on al-Qaeda's Iraq arm. (More Iraq stories.)