From the Timesonline:
At least 52 people were killed and dozens injured when suicide bombers blew themselves up inside two mosques in eastern Iraq during Friday prayers.
Witnesses described how the men walked into the Shia mosques in the town of Khanaqin, on the border with Iran, and detonated explosive belts. The buildings, packed with worshippers on the Muslim holy day, were destroyed.
The explosions came around two hours after a twin vehicle bomb attack on the Hamra, a hotel used by foreign journalists in central Baghdad. At least eight people were killed, including a woman and two children, and 40 more were hurt.
The blasts in the Jadriyah district of the capital were close to a government building at the centre of a new torture scandal, although this is not believed to have been the target.
The first blast – captured on surveillance video – knocked down the walls protecting the rear of the hotel at about 8.20am (0520GMT). A second, bigger explosion followed a minute later as a water truck attempted to drive through the breach but was blocked by the crater and rubble.
The blasts reverberated through the city centre, sending a mushroom cloud hundreds of feet into the air. A third vehicle packed with explosives was found near to another hotel less than a mile away. It was detonated in a controlled expolsion.
Several residential buildings near to the Hamra collapsed from the twin blasts, which gouged a large crater in the road outside. Water from the second vehicle flooded the street.
Firefighters joined neighbours to dig through the debris and under toppled blast barriers to pull victims from the rubble.
The deputy interior minister, Major General Hussein Kamal said the heavily fortified hotel appeared to be the target, with the first bomb designed to breach blast walls and the second to cause devastation…