BAGHDAD -- Violence spiked in Iraq on Thursday with five attacks killing at least 19 people and wounding more than 100, including a provincial council member and a high-ranking Iraqi military official.
Iraqi officials said al-Qaeda in Iraq probably was responsible for the string of attacks, which have totaled more than a dozen in the past 24 hours.
The worst attack was in Hillah, 65 miles south of Baghdad, where two bombs detonated outside the main bus terminal, killing 10 and wounding more than 100.
Maj. Muthana Ahmad, spokesman for the Babel police force, said the first bomb was planted inside a vegetable market near the bus terminal, and the second explosion was from a car bomb parked at the side of the bus terminal.
The explosion hit a team of Babel police bomb squad members who were en route to the scene, killing Brig. Gen. Talib Khalil, head of the city's explosives ordnance disposal unit.
Naeem Jassem, a member of the Babel provincial council and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law party, was also killed at a nearby checkpoint in an accidental shooting in the aftermath of the explosion, according to a Hillah police official.
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