BAGHDAD: Car bombs and a suicide attack tore through food markets in two Iraqi towns north of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 21 people in unrest apparently caused by militants determined to provoke civil war.

No group claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attacks.

Officials said two car bombs exploded and a suicide bomber in another vehicle detonated his explosives in a food market in the mostly Shiite town of Jadidat Al-Shatt in Diyala province, 40 km north of the capital.

The triple blasts left 13 dead and more than 50 wounded among the wreckage of fruit and vegetable stalls, local officials and police said.

“I was selling watermelon and suddenly I heard a powerful blast at the entrance to the market. I fled from the dust and smoke when a second blast turned the place into hell,” said Hassan Hadi, a wounded farmer being treated in hospital.

“I was hit in my leg and lay down in shock.”

Another car bomb hit a market in the religiously-mixed town of Taji, 20 km north of Baghdad, killing at least eight more people, police and hospital sources said.

Iraqi police also defused bombs planted at two oil wells near the northern city of Kirkuk yesterday, and while exports to Turkey’s Ceyhan port were not affected, militants have increased attacks on oil facilities on which Iraq’s economy depends.