Wave of car bombs kill at least 29 in Iraq

Iraqi policeman guards a checkpoint in the capital Baghdad A wave of car bombs struck in and around Baghdad on Monday morning, killing at least 29 people, security and medical officials said. Nine car bombs hit seven different areas of Baghdad, five of them Shiite-majority, while another exploded in Mahmudiyah to the south of the capital.
The blasts also wounded at least 129 people.
Two more car bombs exploded in Kut, southeast of the Iraqi capital, killing at least five people and wounding 35.
With the latest unrest, more than 770 people have been killed in violence in July and over 3,000 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.
Iraq has faced years of attacks by militants, but analysts say widespread discontent among members of its Sunni Arab minority that the government has failed to address has fuelled the surge this year.
On Sunday, bomb hit a pipeline carrying oil from Iraq to Turkey, stopping exports, a police officer and a senior official from the North Oil Company said.
The official said a maintenance team was sent to conduct repairs.
There have been about 30 attacks on the pipeline so far this year, the official added.
The 970-kilometre (600-mile) pipeline runs from Iraq\'s northern oil hub of Kirkuk to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey\'s Mediterranean coast.
But saboteurs in both Iraq and Turkey have repeatedly disrupted exports through the pipeline.
Source: AFP