Ahmed Saad/Reuters
At least 18 people were killed after a suicide bombing and a car bombing struck the offices of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party on Sunday. It occurred in Jalawla, which is in the ethnically mixed province of Diyala. Jalawla's chariman of the city council said "a suicide bomber parked a car packed with explosives near the PUK headquarters and when it went off, he managed to sneak into the building and detonated his vest." It is still unclear how many were involved with the attacks. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was payback for the arrest of Muslim women in iraq's Kurdish region. There has been a spate of attacks this weekend, including a university being taken hostage, as Iraq deals with a new surge of violence. More than 4,500 people have been killed in Iraq in 2014, according to the AFP.