BAGHDAD — Militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria gained control of the main road that links Baghdad with the northern provinces for a short time on Sunday, while a series of explosions around Iraq left up to 25 dead, according to security forces.
In the deadliest blast of the day, a car bomb was detonated as a joint patrol for the police and army passed through Mosul in the north, killing 10 and wounding 12 others, the security forces said.
Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a powerful jihadist group once affiliated with Al Qaeda, kidnapped five people, including an oil executive, who were traveling on the road in Salahuddin Province that links the north to the capital.
All of the attacks came less than a week after the 11th anniversary of the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, an event that many Iraqis regard as the fall of the capital, and just two weeks before the first parliamentary elections since the United States withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. The vote is scheduled for the end of the month.
In Kirkuk in the north, a suicide bomber blew up himself near a security checkpoint, killing eight people, according to security sources. And in Salahuddin Province, gunmen attacked the home of a Sunni tribal fighter, killing three members of his family, and four police officers were killed when a car bomb exploded near their checkpoint.
