KIRKUK, Iraq: Two bombings in an Iraqi market and another in a cemetery as people buried victims of the first blasts killed 11 people on Friday, police and a doctor said.
The first two attacks targeting a livestock market in Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad, killed eight people and wounded 25.
As people gathered at a cemetery to bury the victims of the market blasts, another bomb went off, killing three people and wounding two.
Militants in Iraq often attack places where crowds of people gather, including markets, cafes and mosques, in an effort to cause maximum casualties.
A number of funerals have also been attacked this year.
Friday’s attacks came a day after three suicide bombers targeted Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad and south of the capital, killing at least 36 people, as militants shot dead a family of five west of the city.
Muhanad Mohammed, a journalist who worked for both foreign and Iraqi media, was among those killed in one of the suicide bombings.
He was the seventh journalist to be killed in Iraq in less than three months.
Violence has surged this year to levels not seen since 2008, when Iraq was just emerging from a brutal sectarian conflict.
More people were killed in the first eight days of this month than in all of December last year.
And more than 6,600 people have been killed since the beginning of 2013, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.
Iraq market and cemetery bombs kill 11
Iraq market and cemetery bombs kill 11
Algeria inaugurates strategic railway to giant Sahara mine
- The mine is expected to produce 4 million tons per year during the initial phase, with production projected to triple to 12 million tons per year by 2030
- The project is financed by the Algerian state and partly built by a Chinese consortium
ALGEIRS: Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Sunday inaugurated a nearly 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) desert railway to transport iron ore from a giant mine, a project he called one of the biggest in the country’s history.
The line will bring iron ore from the Gara Djebilet deposit in the south to the city of Bechar located 950 kilometers north, to be taken to a steel production plant near Oran further north.
The project is financed by the Algerian state and partly built by a Chinese consortium.
During the inauguration, Tebboune described it as “one of the largest strategic projects in the history of independent Algeria.”
This project aims to increase Algeria’s iron ore extraction capacity, as the country aspires to become one of Africa’s leading steel producers.
The iron ore deposit is also seen as a key driver of Algeria’s economic diversification as it seeks to reduce its reliance on hydrocarbons, according to experts.
President Tebboune attended an inauguration ceremony in Bechar, welcoming the first passenger train from Tindouf in southern Algeria and sending toward the north a first charge of iron ore, according to footage broadcast on national television.
The mine is expected to produce 4 million tons per year during the initial phase, with production projected to triple to 12 million tons per year by 2030, according to estimates by the state-owned Feraal Group, which manages the site.
It is then expected to reach 50 million tons per year in the long term, it said.
The start of operations at the mine will allow Algeria to drastically reduce its iron ore imports and save $1.2 billion per year, according to Algerian media.
