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Iraq

At Least 13 Dead In Iraq Bomb Attacks

BBC NEWS (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), AP, REUTERS

Worldcrunch

BAGHDAD – A series of bomb attacks killed at least 13 and wounded dozens on Thursday morning in Iraq, in the latest surge of violence sweeping the country, officials told AP.

According to the police, most of the attacks happened in Baghdad, including a car bomb that killed four in the northern Shia district of Binouq, and another bombing at a city center market that killed three, the police told AP.

Attacks also targeted the northern city of Mosul, where at least three policemen died after a man attacked a federal police checkpoint. Al Jazeera reports that as many as eight officers may have died in the attack.

"There has not been a claim of responsibility,” Al Jazeera reporter Jane Arraf said of the attack in Mosul. “But in the past, an al-Qaeda front group has claimed responsibility for attacks on Shia areas and security forces, which they see as illegitimate," she added.

The escalation of violence in recent weeks has raised concerns that the country could slide back to levels of sectarian violence that tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007, the BBC reports.

"We have major concerns. Because what is going on now is the same that led to what happened in 2006,"" Adnan Faihan, the head of the political bureau of the Shia armed group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, told Al Jazeera.

Reuters reports that more than 1,100 people have been killed since the start of April when the latest wave of attacks erupted. With a death toll of more than 700, April was the deadliest month since U.S. troops left the country in December 2011.

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Society

Why Every New Parent Should Travel Alone — Without Their Children

Argentine journalist Ignacio Pereyra travels to Italy alone to do some paperwork as his family stays behind. While he walks alone around Rome, he experiences mixed feelings: freedom, homesickness and nostalgia, and wonders what leads people to desire larger families.

Photo of a man sitting donw with his luggage at Athens' airport

Alone at Athens' international airport

Ignacio Pereyra

I realize it in the morning before leaving: I feel a certain level of excitement about traveling. It feels like enthusiasm, although it is confusing. I will go from Athens to Naples to see if I can finish the process for my Italian citizenship, which I started five years ago.

I started the process shortly after we left Buenos Aires, when my partner Irene and I had been married for two years and the idea of having children was on the vague but near horizon.

Now there are four of us and we have been living in Greece for more than two years. We arrived here in the middle of the pandemic, which left a mark on our lives, as in the lives of most of the people I know.

But now it is Sunday morning. I tell Lorenzo, my four-year-old son, that I am leaving for a few days: “No, no, Dad. You can’t go. Otherwise I’ll throw you into the sea.”

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