Baghdad, March 20, (RHC), -- At least 43 people were killed and some 198 others wounded in a series of bomb attacks across Iraq on Tuesday, ahead of the next week's Arab League summit in the capital city of Baghdad.

The latest spate of violence occurred in the holy Shiite city of Karbala when two car bombs detonated almost simultaneously near a police station, killing up to 13 people and wounding 38 others, a local police said.

Another deadly attack occurred in the city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, as a suicide bomber and two car bomb explosions killed 11 people, including ten policeman and wounded 52 others.

In Baghdad, eight people have been killed and 37 others injured in two separate bomb attacks in the central district of Alawi and at a parking lot outside the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.

In addition, gunmen attacked a church in Baghdad western district of Mansour and exchanged gunfire with policemen guarding the building, killing three of them before they fled the scene.

In a separate incident, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden car near a coffee shop in Hilla, some 100 km south of Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding some 30 others, a local police source told Xinhua.

Also, a soldier and a civilian were killed and 17 people were wounded when a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi army patrol in Ramadi, the source said.

Moreover, gunmen blew up bombs at the house of a policeman in the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, killing his wife and his son.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, seven people, including three policemen, were wounded in separate bomb attacks across the province, a source from the provincial operations command told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Elsewhere, two people were killed and up to 13 wounded in sporadic bomb and gunfire attacks in Salahudin province, north of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua.

The attacks came on the ninth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled the former leader Saddam Hussein and just days before Baghdad hosts an Arab League summit on March 29. /XINHUA

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