Blast kills 22, wounds 53 in Iraqi market

A mini van packed with explosives blew up at a crowded market in Iraq's troubled northern Diyala province on Friday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 53 others, police said.                      
 

The attack took place near a crowded cafe in the town of Khalis, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.                     
 

Khalis was the scene of a market bombing in March that killed nearly 60 people.                                           

Another car bombing on Friday in the town of Nimrud, just south of the northern city of Mosul, wounded seven people, police said.      

Overall violence in Iraq has dropped sharply since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07 but bombings are still a regular occurrence.
 

Tensions have been running high since an inconclusive March 7 parliamentary election left a power vacuum and raised concerns about a renewal of sectarian violence.                                           
 

A cross-sectarian coalition led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi and supported heavily by minority Sunnis won a two-seat victory over a mostly Shi'ite bloc headed by prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.                                           
 

Iraq's minority Sunnis feel they have been marginalised by the political ascent of the Shi'ite majority since the 2003 US -led invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.           
 

The election has yet to be certified and talks to form a new government could take weeks.                                           

Attacks that have killed hundreds of people in recent weeks were seen as al-Qaeda in Iraq's response to the deaths in an April raid of its leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of an affiliate known as the Islamic State of Iraq.