Iraq: Bombing at Kurdish party HQ kills at least 19

At least 19 people were killed and 26 wounded in two blasts at the headquarters of a Kurdish political party in Iraq's ethnically mixed province of Diyala on Sunday, local officials and medics said. Additional attacks on Sunday wounded dozens more across the country.

Most of the victims of Sunday's attack were members of the Kurdish security forces who were guarding the office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party in the town of Jalawla, 70 miles northeast of Baghdad.

"A suicide bomber parked a car packed with explosives near the PUK headquarters, and after it went off, he managed to sneak into the building and detonate his vest," Khorsheed Ahmed, chairman of Jalawla city council, told Reuters.

The PUK is headed by the ailing Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, who is receiving medical treatment in a hospital in Germany.

The explosions were the latest in a show of strength by armed groups that in recent days have overrun parts of two major cities, occupied a university campus in western Iraq where they took hundreds of hostages, and set off a dozen car bombs in Baghdad, killing scores of people.

Jalawla lies in disputed territory and is one of several towns where Iraqi troops and Kurdish regional guards have previously faced off against each other, asserting their competing claims over the area.

Both are a target for Sunni rebels, who have been regaining ground and momentum in Iraq over the past year.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a Sunni group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack in a statement posted on its Twitter account, and said it was in revenge for the arrest of Muslim women in Kurdistan.

ISIL gave a slightly different version of the attack from that of the police, saying it had been carried out by two suicide bombers, the first of whom drove a car packed with explosives into the PUK's compound and blew himself and the vehicle up.

The second, whose name indicated he was a Kurd, then entered a crowd of people that had gathered to help those wounded in the first blast and detonated his explosives belt amongst them.

Sunday's attack came a day after a series of deadly bombings and clashes left at least 73 people dead.

In April, a suicide bomber struck a Kurdish political rally in the town of Khaniqin, also in Diyala, killing 30 people.

Nearly 800 people, including 603 civilians, were killed across Iraq in May alone — the highest monthly toll so far this year. In 2013, the country's death toll rose to 8,868 people, according to U.N. figures, in what was Iraq's deadliest year since violence began to ease from a peak in 2006-07. With none of the problems that contribute to the heightened unrest headed for quick resolutions, the bloodshed is likely to continue unabated.

Baghdad-based political analyst Ahmed Younis said ISIL was benefiting from the group's consolidation across the border in Syria, which allowed it to focus on Iraq and drain the army's resolve and resources.

"Hit and run attacks conducted by ISIL in Iraq, especially in the mainly Sunni provinces, keep the army engaged on multiple fronts and definitely draw the government forces into a protracted battle," Younis said.

Police and security sources said Iraqi special forces were still fighting on Sunday to regain control over several districts on the left bank of the river that cuts through the northern city of Mosul, which armed groups moved into on Friday.

Two members of the Iraqi elite forces were killed in clashes there on Sunday, Reuters reported. AFP said shelling killed eight people and wounded three. In the western province of Anbar, armed groups withdrew from a Ramadi university, which they occupied on Saturday, and took up positions in the surrounding area, shooting at the army as they tried to enter the campus, according to police, security officials and witnesses. 

In Sargaran, northwest of the city of Kirkuk, three roadside bombs killed a civilian and wounded three soldiers, AFP reported.

Al Jazeera and wire services