By NBC News wire services
Updated at 9 a.m. ET:?BAGHDAD:?Two car bombs exploded near the Iraqi city of Amara on Sunday, killing at least 16 people, police and hospital sources said, as a wave of attacks killed nearly 60 across the country.
Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida have launched a series of major attacks this year in an attempt to stoke the kind of political and sectarian tensions that drove the country near to civil war in 2006-2007.
The violence, which struck at least 10 cities across the nation, highlighted militant attempts to sow havoc in the country and undermine the government. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, although security forces are a frequent target of al-Qaida's Iraqi franchise, which has vowed to reassert itself and take back areas it was forced from before U.S.troops withdrew from the country last year.
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Another attack happened overnight in Dujail, 30 miles north of Baghdad, when gunmen and a suicide bomber driving a car attacked a military base, killing 11 soldiers and injuring seven, police sources told Reuters.
Officials told The Associated Press that 10 had died in the incident. There was no explanation for the different death tolls but such discrepancies are common in the immediate aftermath of attacks.
Hours later, a car bomb struck a group of police recruits waiting in line to apply for jobs with the state-run Northern Oil Co. outside the northern city of Kirkuk. City police commander Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir said seven recruits were killed and 17 wounded. He said all the recruits were Sunni Muslims and blamed the early morning attack on al-Qaida, but did not provide details.
In Tuz Khormato near Kirkuk, some 180 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb outside of a market killed four and wounded 41, Salahuddin provincial health director Raeed Ibrahim told the AP. ??
Stringer / Iraq / Reuters
Security personnel inspect the site of a bomb attack in Kirkuk, 155 miles north of Baghdad, on Sunday.
Car bombs also struck two Sunni towns outside Kirkuk -- Hawija and Ar Riyad -- wounding seven people. Kirkuk has been a flashpoint city for years. Iraqi Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen all claim rights to the city and the oil-rich land that surrounds it.? ?
In Kirkuk itself, Qadir said three mid-morning explosions -- two car bombs and a roadside bomb -- killed seven and wounded about 70.
Kurdish leaders long have sought to draw Kirkuk into their self-rule region of Iraq's three northernmost provinces, and have pushed for a census to determine the city's ethnic majority. But the majority Arab central government in Baghdad has delayed the census, which could incite widespread ethnic violence over Kirkuk's future.
Also, a roadside bomb in Taji, just north of Baghdad, left two passers-by dead and 11 injured. ??
Another car bomb exploded outside the French consular building in the usually stable city of Nassiriya, 185 miles south of Baghdad, wounding two people, police told Reuters. No French diplomats were among the casualties, local deputy health director Dr. Adnan al-Musharifawi told the AP.?
Al-Musharifawi also said that that two people were killed and three wounded in a bomb blast at a hotel in Nassiriya.?
A string of smaller attacks also struck eight other cities and towns, including Samarra, Basra and Tuz Khormato?and Iraq's capital Baghdad,?Reuters and the AP reported.
In the capital's eastern Shiite neighborhood of Husseniyah, roadside bombs killed a policeman and a passer-by, security and health officials said.?Another eight people -- including four soldiers -- were wounded, the officials said.? ?
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The rest of the attacks were car bombs that hit cities stretching from the southern port city of Basra, Iraq's second largest, to Tal Afar northwest of Baghdad near the Syrian border.? ?
The blast in Basra killed three people and wounded 24, while the bomb in Tal Afar killed two passers-by and wounded seven, officials said.
Riven by infighting
The government, riven by infighting among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish political factions, is still struggling to battle Islamist militants and an al-Qaida affiliate nine months after the last U.S. troops left.
Iraq's local al-Qaida wing, Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for other major attacks on security forces and Shiite neighborhoods. But former members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baathist party and other Sunni Islamist groups are also fighting the government. ??
Tension in Iraq's delicate power-sharing government, and a resurgence of the al-Qaida group, have raised fears of a return to widespread violence, especially as Iraq struggles to contain spillover from the growing conflict in neighboring Syria.
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