'Al Qaeda back with a vengeance in Iraq & Syria'

"... The violence, which struck at least a dozen cities and wounded 285 people, highlighted militant attempts to sow havoc in the country and undermine the government.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but security forces are a frequent target of Al Qaeda's Iraq branch, which has vowed to reassert itself and take back areas it was forced from before U.S. troops withdrew from the country last year.....
In Sunday's deadliest attack, gunmen stormed a small Iraqi Army outpost in the town of Dujail before dawn, killing at least 10 soldiers and wounding eight more,....
Hours later, a car bomb struck a group of police recruits waiting in line to apply for jobs with the state-run Northern Oil Co. outside the northern city of Kirkuk. ..........  seven recruits were killed and 17 wounded. He said all the recruits were Sunni Muslims and blamed the early morning attack on Al Qaeda.
The carnage stretched into the country's south, where bombs stuck to two parked cars exploded in the Shiite-dominated city of Nasiriyah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. The blasts were near the French consulate and a local hotel in the city, although the consulate did not appear to be a target of the attack...two people were killed and three were wounded at the hotel, and one Iraqi policeman was wounded at the consulate...."