A spate of attacks claimed the lives of over 30 people in Iraq on Sunday, just one month before the country goes to the polls for Parliamentary elections.
Shortly after midnight gunmen attacked an army base in south of Mosul, leaving 7 soldiers dead, police confirmed. A suicide bomber in the city of Ramadi in Anbar province, killed 13 people and wounded 11 others, as he detonated his explosive-laden car damaging a bridge across the Euphrates River.
Also in Anbar province an assault on the army base near the city of Fallujah killed nine soldiers and wounded 14 others.
A blast near the market in Baghdad’s southern suburb of Youssifiyah killed four shoppers and wounded nine others. At least 8 more people – including a mother and three of her children – were killed in a bomb attack in northern Baghdad, as attackers targeted a police patrol in Adhamiyah neighborhood, a police source told Al Jazeera.
Elsewhere on Sunday, two police officers were killed by a roadside bomb that exploded in Tikrit north of Baghdad.
The latest surge in violence between Sunni and Shia Muslim groups in the country killed more than 2,200 people already this year, with over 500 dying in March, according to AFP.
One month before the election, central authorities are still trying to reclaim Anbar province with a predominant Sunni population on the border with Syria.
In early January, Al-Qaeda linked insurgents captured parts of the Ramadi and all of Fallujah, both located in Anbar province. Security forces have yet to recapture Fallujah however they have managed to take back most of Ramadi.
The violence has been primarily driven by rage of the Sunni minority over their mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government. Conflict in neighboring Syria is also having an effect on the amount of Al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant jihadist fighters in the region. Parliamentary elections in the country are scheduled for April 30.