About 78 Iraqis died and another 166 were wounded by radical Islamic terrorists in attacks spread throughout Iraq on Saturday, according to counterterrorism analyst George S. Timmons.
The attacks included a large-scale suicide bombing that targeted Shiite Muslims on a pilgrimage while they were in Baghdad, the police and Middle East news media reported.
That bombing left 51 people, including the bomber, dead and 107 others wounded on Saturday evening when the bomber detonated his bomb-laden vest near the Shiite pilgrims in Adhamiya district of Baghdad, noted Timmons.
The pilgrims were on their way to a mosque in the the northern section of Baghdad, he added.
Also on Saturday evening, 11 Iraqis died and another 35 were wounded when another car bomb exploded near a popular cafe in the town of Balad, about 50-miles north of Baghdad.
In another attack, one Iraqi civilian was killed and 10 others were wounded when a roadside IED (improvised explosive device) exploded near an eatery in the southwest section of Baghdad. Timmons said, that a police officer was killed and two other cops were wounded when a roadside IED targeted the police officers on patrol in Baghdad.
The attacks against the Shiite pilgrims are believed to be the work of Sunni Islamists who are part of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who are now calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Timmons stated.
In a separate attack, a number of gunmen ambushed a joint army and police patrol in the Falluja area, killing one soldier and one police officer while wounding three other soldiers.
Besides Shiite pilgrims, police officers and soldiers, the terrorist also murdered a reporter with a Middle East TV satellite channel as well as his colleague. In Iraq's city of Mosul, gunmen shot dead Mohammed Karim al-Badrani, a correspondent with al-Sharqiyah satellite channel, and his partner, Mohammed Ghanim, while they were interviewing local citizens in central Mosul.
The Iraqi Journalists Syndicate, which called the killings "an assassination of the two journalists," claims that since 2003 more than 375 journalists and their crews were killed.
Meanwhile, terrorists detonated bombs in the homes of three police officers in Falluja, killing two people and wounding four others, including a police officer.
The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq claims that upwards of 6,000 civilians were killed and over 14,000 others injured in Iraq from January to September in 2013.
