Hussein Jaafar, the director of the hospital in Balad Ruz, said Saturday that five more people have died from injuries sustained in the blast.
The suicide bomber blew himself up inside a popular cafe Friday night, breaking what has been a period of relative calm in Iraq.
The neighborhood where the explosion occurred is home to many Shiites of Kurdish ethnicity.
The blast was the first major suicide bomb attack in Iraq since early September, as political factions continue to tussle over positions and power almost eight months after an inconclusive election.
Small bombings and assassinations have, however, continued daily following the formal end of US combat operations on Aug. 31, 7-1/2 years after the US-led invasion that triggered ferocious sectarian warfare in Iraq.
“I was near the cafe and suddenly a big explosion happened inside and there was chaos in the area,” said Sadeq Abbas, a 41-year-old Kurd from Balad Ruz, which lies roughly halfway to the Iranian border from the volatile city of Baquba.
“Security forces started shooting in the air to disperse the crowd and prevent people from going near the cafe,” Abbas said by telephone.
The cafe, a popular venue for playing dominoes, smoking shisha pipes and drinking sweet tea, was destroyed, said Col. Kadhim Bashir Saleh, a spokesman in Baghdad of Iraq’s civil defense force. Overall violence has fallen sharply in Iraq since bloodshed between once dominant Sunnis and majority Shiites peaked in 2006-07, but March’s election that produced no outright winner and as yet no new government has stoked tensions.
Incumbent Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, a Shiite, is locked in a battle with a Sunni-backed cross-sectarian alliance led by former premier Iyad Allawi to see who can form a coalition government.
Minority Kurds, who have played a kingmaker role in Iraqi politics since the invasion ousted Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, are being courted by both coalitions but appear more likely to side with Maliki and his Shiite-led alliance.
