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Global

Iraq suicide bomb death toll rises to 25


    SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Kurdish funeral in Iraq's volatile, ethnically mixed northern Diyala province on Monday, killing 25 people and wounding 45, police said.

    They said news of casualty numbers from the bombing of the densely packed crowd were still coming in and the toll would most likely rise.

    Earlier, a bomb at a west Baghdad bus terminal killed nine people and wounded 23, Iraqi police said, the second bomb attack in the predominantly Sunni Arab Abu Ghraib district this month.

    A source in Abu Ghraib hospital said they had received eight bodies from the blast and treated nine people for wounds so far.

    Violence has dropped sharply in Iraq in the last year to lows rarely seen since mid-2003, but militants, mostly linked to Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, have shown themselves still capable of launching devastating bomb attacks.

    On March 10, a suicide bomber killed at least 28 people in Abu Ghraib. The bomb targeted tribal leaders and security officials who had gathered for a reconciliation conference.

    (Writing by Mohammed Abbas and Tim Cocks; Editing by Richard Williams)