A suicide bomber killed 25 people and wounded more than 50 in Baghdad on Friday when he detonated his explosives inside a busy cafe near a park popular with families, police and medical sources said. The bombing took place in al-Qahira, a northern district of the capital, an area targeted by previous attacks. Children were among the casualties, the sources said, and the wounded had been taken to four different hospitals. It was one of the worst attacks in Iraq since suicide bombers hit the same district two months ago, targeting a Shi'ite Muslim mosque and killing 29 worshippers during noon prayers. Since the start of 2013, bomb attacks by mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents have increasingly targeted cafes and other places where families gather, as well as the usual targets of military facilities and checkpoints. Eighteen months since U.S. troops withdrew, Iraq is suffering from the worst wave of violence in five years. Deep-rooted sectarian tensions have escalated, aggravated by the civil war in neighboring Syria and political divisions between Shi'ite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish factions.
