By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: June 9, 2007
BAGHDAD, June 8 — More than 50 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Friday, including 14 who died when gunmen stormed a police chief’s home northeast of Baghdad and raked the occupants with automatic fire.
The police chief, staying elsewhere for the night, survived. His wife and son were among the dead.
At least 34 others were killed in two bombing attacks, one in the northern city of Daquq, about 30 miles south of Kirkuk, and the other in the southern city of Qurna, 60 miles north of Basra. In a familiar pattern, both bombings involved successive explosions set at close quarters in crowded areas, a technique often used to maximize casualties.
The Daquq bombings struck a Shiite mosque and a nearby police station. The attack began when two suicide bombers detonated explosive vests in the forecourt of a mosque frequented by supporters of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, followed by a car bomb close by, according to the local police. They said at least 19 people died, and more than 20 were wounded.
The Qurna blasts involved two vehicle bombs, one in a minibus in a bus terminal, the other in a car beside a nearby market. The police said at least 15 people were killed and more than 30 wounded.
Most of the victims in the Daquq and Qurna bombings appeared to have been Shiites, who account for about 60 percent of Iraq’s population and have been the principal targets of attacks by Sunni insurgent groups seeking to drive foreign forces out of Iraq and restore Sunni minority rule.
The attack on the police chief’s house, at Kanaan, about 15 miles south of Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province, was the latest in a wave of attacks across the province that have been directed against Iraqi Army and police bases and their commanders, as well as a 5,500-member American force that is seeking to rein in the violence that has made Diyala, after Baghdad, the bloodiest theater of war in Iraq.
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Another target of Mr. Maliki’s outburst appeared to be Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni political leader who is one of Iraq’s two vice presidents and who has accused Mr. Maliki of being an increasingly sectarian figure with little interest in reaching out to Sunnis. Mr. Hashemi’s group, the Iraqi Consensus Front, has held talks with Mr. Allawi, arousing fears among religious Shiites that moves to unseat the Maliki government, and Shiite political dominance, may be afoot.
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