BAGHDAD — Suicide bombers killed 37 people at a Shiite mosque in the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, in the third consecutive day of sectarian attacks this week.
At afternoon prayer time, the two attackers gunned down three guards at the mosque, in the Qahira neighborhood in northern Baghdad, and then blew themselves up, killing 34 worshipers and wounding at least 57 more, the police said. The mosque is a popular place of worship for students from a nearby Shiite Islamic university.
While there were no immediate claims of responsibility, Sunni extremists have escalated their attacks to undermine the Shiite-led government and to stoke sectarian divisions since the beginning of the year.
The mosque bombing was the latest in a series of attacks this week that appeared to reflect the sectarian turmoil that has erupted across the country. The latest attacks came after the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, threatened Shiites with more violence.
On Monday, two bomb attacks in Taji and one in Fallujah killed 15 people, The Associated Press reported. On Sunday, car bombings and attacks across Iraq killed at least 33 people and wounded more than 100, security officials said.
Iraq is undergoing its most violent period since 2008, with nearly 2,000 Iraqis killed in violence since April, the Interior Ministry has said.
In other violence on Tuesday, four civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb that was targeting a police patrol exploded in western Baghdad, and in the northern city of Mosul, security forces killed two gunmen trying to blow up a polling station.
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