BAQUBA, Iraq, May 21, (Agencies): A car bomb at a market in the central Iraqi city of Khales killed at least 23 people and wounded 55 others on Friday, Diyala province’s security command said.
The attack came at around 7:30 pm (1630 GMT), close to an office of the police rapid reaction force in the centre of the city, 65 kms (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, according to an official at Baquba operations command.
“Policemen were securing the market like they always do, but I want to ask — how did that car enter the market?” said Haitham Hussein al-Tamimi, who was being treated for leg wounds at Baquba hospital in the provincial capital.
“The police work hand-in-hand with the terrorists, and the government in Baghdad must rectify this situation,” added Tamimi, who owns a shop in the market that was hit.
“Two months ago, Khales was hit by a big attack, and today it was the same again.”
On March 26, twin bombings in front of a cafe and a restaurant in the city killed 42 people and wounded 65 others.
The latest violence came as political wrangling over the outcome of Iraq’s March 7 election rumbles on, with no bloc having yet assembled the parliamentary majority necessary to form a government. Friday’s attack was the deadliest to hit Iraq since May 14, when a double bombing at an unprotected football match in the north of the country killed 25 people and wounded 120.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds on Friday condemned air strikes and shellfire by Turkey and Iran on Turkish-Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq as violations of Iraqi sovereignty.
Iranian forces shelled border regions and Turkish war planes caused “huge” casualties, according to a statement from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which runs northern Iraq autonomously from Baghdad.
Turkish military sources said Thursday’s attacks on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an outlawed Turkish-Kurdish group largely based in north Iraq, were the biggest such operation in over a year and had killed four guerrillas and wounded more.
“The presidency of the Iraq Kurdistan region condemns these attacks on the border regions, and at the same time considers this a violation and aggression on the sovereignty of the Iraqi state and demands its immediate cessation,” the statement said.
KRG President Massoud Barzani had been expected to visit Ankara as relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds improve, but Thursday’s operations could revive tension between the two.
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 to fight for an ethnic homeland for Kurds in southeast Turkey and more than 40,000 people have died in the conflict.
In an unrelated development the US military in Iraq freed two Iranian prisoners from its custody on Friday, an Iranian diplomat at Tehran’s embassy in Baghdad told AFP.

“Two Iranians have been freed by the Americans after co-operation with the office of the prime minister (Nuri al-Maliki) and the Iranian embassy,” an Iranian diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The diplomat declined to give any further details about the two Iranians who were freed.
The US military did not immediately respond to requests to confirm the prisoners’ release.
But Iran’s envoy to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, told Iranian state-run television that the two men were Ahmad Barazandeh and Ali Abdulmaliki, who were detained seven and three years ago respectively because they did not have passports.
“Barazandeh and Abdulmaliki came to Iraq for a pilgrimage but when they were arrested in Najaf and Samarra, they did not have their passports,” he said, referring to Iraqi cities where two holy Shiite Muslim shrines are situated.
He added that they had been handed over to the Iranian embassy and would return to Iran at “the earliest time” possible.