Iraqis inspect the scene of a car bomb attack in the town of Taji, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012. A rapid-fire series of explosions in Baghdad while Iraqis were going to work on Sunday morning, killed and wounded scores of people, police said. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

BAGHDAD (AP) — A series of coordinated bombings shattered Shiite neighborhoods and struck at Iraqi security forces Sunday, killing at least 26 in attacks that one official described as a rallying call by al-Qaida just days after dozens of militants escaped from prison.

The blasts brought September's death toll from sectarian violence to nearly 200 people — a grim, above-average monthly total for the period since U.S. troops left last year. The steady pace of attacks has worked to undermine confidence in the government.

"The people are fed up with the killings in Iraqi cities," said Ammar Abbas, 45, a Shiite and government employee who lives in aBaghdad neighborhood near one of the bombings. "The government officials should feel shame for letting their people die at the hands of terrorists."

Police said the wave of explosions stretched from the restive but oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the north to the southern Shiite town of Kut, wounding at least 94 people. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but bombings are a hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency that has been struggling for years to goad Shiite militias back toward civil war.

A key Shiite lawmaker said the bombings likely sought to galvanize al-Qaida in the wake of a prison break last Friday in Saddam Hussein's northern hometown of Tikrit. Scores of inmates escaped — including as many as 47 convicted al-Qaida militants — in a massive security lapse that the government acknowledged had help from inside.

"Al-Qaida leaders have no intention of leaving this country or letting Iraqis live in peace," said Hakim al-Zamili, a Shiite member of parliament's security committee. "The jailbreak in Tikrit has boosted al-Qaida's morale in Iraq and thus we should expect more attacks in the near future."

"The situation in Iraq is still unstable," al-Zamili added. "And repetition of such attacks shows that our security forces are still unqualified to deal with the terrorists."

Spokesmen for the government and Baghdad's military command could not immediately be reached for comment.

Sunday's deadliest attack struck the town of Taji, a former al-Qaida stronghold just north of Baghdad. Police said three explosive-rigged cars in a Shiite neighborhood went off within minutes of each other, killing eight and wounding 28 in back-to-back blasts that began around 7:15 a.m.

At almost the same time, in Baghdad, police said a suicide bomber set off his explosives-packed car in the northwest Shiite neighborhood of Shula. One person was killed and seven wounded. Police could not immediately identify the target.

"So many people were hurt. A leg of a person was amputated," lamented Shula resident Naeem Frieh. "What have those innocent people done to deserve this?"

The chain reaction of blasts continued throughout the morning, petering off around noon.

Another suicide bomber drove a minibus into a security checkpoint in Kut, located 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad. Maj. Gen. Hussein Abdul-Hadi Mahbob said three police officers were killed and five wounded.

A military patrol hit a roadside bomb in Tarmiyah, about an hour north of Baghdad, killing two soldiers and wounding six passers-by, officials said.

And car bombs exploded outside the northern city of Kirkuk, the northeastern towns of Balad Ruz and Khan Bani Saad in Diyala province, and in the town of Madain outside Baghdad. In all, seven people were killed.

Also in Baghdad, a double car bomb struck the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Karradah in the most recent episode of an all-too-familiar insurgent tactic. The first explosion came as a security patrol passed, killing a police officer and a bystander, and wounding eight other people. As emergency responders rushed to the scene, the second car blew up, killing three passers-by and injuring 12, according to officials.

An Associated Press cameraman was knocked to the ground in the second explosion and an AP photographer was slightly injured.

All of the casualties were confirmed by Iraqi security and health officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to release the information.

Earlier this summer, the Iraqi wing of al-Qaida, also called the Islamic State of Iraq, launched a campaign dubbed "Breaking the Walls," which aimed at retaking strongholds from which it was driven by the American military after sectarian fighting peaked in 2007.

The insurgent group has for years had a hot-and-cold relationship with the global terror network's leadership. Both shared the goal of targeting the U.S. military in Iraq and, to an extent, undermining the Shiite government that replaced Saddam Hussein's regime. But al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri distanced themselves from the Iraqi militants in 2007 for also killing Iraqi civilians instead of focusing on Western targets.

But even before U.S. troops withdrew last December, the insurgency sought to taunt Shiite militiasand undermine Iraq's beleaguered Shiite-led government through near-monthly spectacular attacks that usually came on the same day in different places across the country, leaving scores of Shiites and security forces dead.

So far this year, the deadly trend has continued. January was Iraq's bloodiest month since the withdrawal, with 255 people killed in sectarian-related attacks. At least 193 people were killed in September. Deaths hit a relative low in May, with 48 killed, according to an Associated Press count.

"Such attacks waged on almost monthly basis show that the terrorist groups are still strong and they are not scattered or in chaos as depicted by the government," said Hadi Jalo, a political analyst in Baghdad. "It shows also that the failing security forces have not moved a step forward in their war against terrorism."

___

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report. Follow Lara Jakes on Twitter at www.twitter.com/larajakesAP

TEHRAN (AP) — Iran's cyber monitors often tout their fight against the West's "soft war" of influence through the Web, but trying to block Google's popular Gmail appeared to be a swipe too far.

Complaints piled up — even from email-starved parliament members — and forced authorities Sunday to double down on their promises to create a parallel Web universe with Tehran as its center.

The strong backlash and the unspecific pledges for an Iran-centric Internet alternative to the Silicon Valley powers and others highlight the two sides of the Islamic Republic's ongoing battles with the Web. It's spurred another technological mobilization that fits neatly into Iran's self-crafted image as the Muslim world's showcase for science, including sending satellites into orbit, claiming advances in cloning and stem cell research and facing down the West over its nuclear program.

But there also are the hard realities of trying to reinvent the Web. Iran's highly educated and widely tech-savvy population is unlikely to warm quickly to potential clunky homegrown browsers or email services. And then there's the potential political and economic fallout of trying to close the tap on familiar sites such as Gmail.

"Some problems have emerged through the blocking of Gmail," Hussein Garrousi, a member of a parliamentary committee on industry, was quoted Sunday by the independent Aftab-e Yazd daily. What he apparently meant was that many lawmakers were angry and missing their emails.

He said that parliament would summon the minister of telecommunications for questioning if the ministry did not lift the Gmail ban, which was imposed last week in respond to clips on Google-owned YouTube of a film mocking the Prophet Muhammad that set off deadly protests across the Islamic world.

Even many newspapers close to the government complained over the email disruptions. On Saturday, the Asr-e Ertebat weekly reported that Iranians had paid a total of $4.5 million to purchase proxy services to reach blocked sites, including Facebook and YouTube, over the past month.

Iranian authorities — perhaps recognizing the risks at hand — decided against taking a symbolic twin shot at Google and cut access to the Web browser in a country with 32 million Internet users among a population of 75 million, according to official statistics.

That would rank online Iran among the world's top 20 in terms of sheer numbers of users, and equivalent to some European countries in per capita Web use at more than 40 percent, according to the private monitoring group Internet World Stats. The World Bank, however, puts Iran's Internet link rate at just 21 percent last year.

The U.S. is among the world's highest at more than 75 percent.

Iran's deputy telecoms minister, Ali Hakim Javadi, told reporters that Iranian authorities were considering lifting the Gmail ban. But he also used the opportunity to again promise development of Iran's domestic alternatives: the Fakhr ("Pride") search engine and the Fajr ("Dawn") email, Aftab-e Yazd reported.

When reporters noted the quality of Gmail services, Javadi quipped: "If there is Mercedes Benz on the street, that doesn't mean everyone drives a Mercedes."

Iran's clerical establishment has long signaled its intent to get citizens off of the international Internet — which they say promotes Western values — and onto a "national" and "clean" domestic network. Earlier this year, Iran's police chief, Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam, called Google an "instrument of espionage" rather than a search engine.

But it is unclear whether Iran has the technical capacity to follow through on its ambitious plans, or is willing to risk the economic damage and the social shock waves.

The Internet has steadily become part of Iran's fabric since the first Farsi-language sites developed a decade ago by Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakshan, who is considered one of the founders of Iran's social media community. Derakshan, however, was detained in 2008 and sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison two years later as the battles heated up between liberals seeking open access to the Web and authorities trying to erect their own version of China's "Great Firewall," the name given to Beijing's extensive filtering and censorship of the Internet.

Sites such as Twitter and Facebook were pillars of the street revolts after the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The powerful Revolutionary Guard responded by recruiting and training its own cyber force to patrol the Web and, later, try to defend against virus attacks on nuclear and other sites that Iran has blamed on the West and its allies.

Some Web security experts also have raised the possibility of Iranian hackers being behind some recent high-profile computer attacks, such as disruptions at Saudi Arabia's state oil giant Saudi Aramco and Qatari natural gas producer RasGas earlier this month. Iran has denied any links.

In a video message for Iranian new year in March, President Barack Obama denounced what he called the "electronic curtain" that keeps ordinary Iranians from reaching out to Americans and the West.

A few weeks later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the creation of an Internet oversight agency that included top military, security and political figures in the country's boldest attempt yet to control the Internet. The panel is headed by Ahmadinejad and includes powerful figures in the security establishment such as the intelligence chief and the commander of the Revolutionary Guard.

It's not Iran's first attempt to hold off what hardliners call a Western "cultural invasion." The so-called Barbie wars have gone on for more than a decade with periodic raids to confiscate the iconic American dolls from toy stores. Iran also introduced its own dolls — twins Dara and Sara — designed to promote traditional values with modest clothing and pro-family values, but it hasn't significantly dented the demand for Barbie dolls.

___

Murphy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Officials mull seismic tests near Calif nuke plant

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2008 file photo, Pacific Gas and Electric's Diablo Canyon Power Plant's nuclear reactors are seen in Avila Beach, Calif. State and federal officials are juggling concerns over endangered whales and other marine life with public safety as they mull over plans to use massive air canons to create new earthquake fault maps in two state marine reserves off the Central Coast. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. wants to use the canons to make maps of shoreline fault zones recently discovered near its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. (AP Photo/Michael A. Mariant, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Plans to use an array of powerful air cannons in an undersea seismic study near a Central Californianuclear power plant have federal and state officials juggling concerns over marine life with public safety.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. wants to use big air guns to emit strong sound waves into a large, near-shore area that includes parts of marine reserves to make three-dimensional maps of fault zones, some of which were discovered in 2008, near its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

But a state study, mandated by AB1632, signed into law in 2006, found the project is likely to have "unavoidable adverse effects" on marine life and the environment. Biologists, environmental groups and fishermen have opposed using the high-energy air guns, saying the blasts have potential to harm endangered whales, California sea otters and other creatures frequenting these waters.

"I am very concerned about impacts to marine mammals, especially some of the large whales including blue, fin, and humpback whales," said John Calambokidis, an Olympia, Wash.-based marine biologist who has studied Pacific Ocean whales for decades. "There are many uncertainties on the impact of this type of operation on whales, especially since we have not seen this type of large air gun survey off California for a long time."

The $64 million, ratepayer-funded effort to understand seismic threats to the plant has intensified since the disastrous 2011 Tohoku quake and tsunami, which disabled reactors at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Quake experts were surprised by the 9.0-magnitude quake on a fault that scientists did not believe would produce a quake stronger than 8.0.

Although the Japan disaster demonstrated that predicting the strength of a quake on a given fault is an inexact science, PG&E wants to know if the newly discovered faults near San Luis Obispo are connected to existing ones that have already been studied. Seismologists typically use a fault's length to estimate the maximum possible earthquake it can produce.

"People need to understand, we're living in the world post-Fukushima, so we need to go back and review everything we think we know about the seismic threat situation around important structures like this power plant," said Bruce Gibson, a former seismologist who now serves as a San Luis Obispo County supervisor.

"Unfortunately, from an environmental impact standpoint, the only real way to get the images is to put high energy sound into the earth."

If the project gains approval from myriad agencies, scientists would tow up to 18 air guns behind a boat and blast loud sound into the water over a 530-square-nautical-mile area. Hundreds of sensors would be placed strategically on the seafloor, picking up the reverberations and allowing computers to create three-dimensional maps in technology similar to an ultrasound.

The air guns and sensors would be dragged through an area that includes two state marine protected areas — Cambria and White Rock — and is adjacent to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Dozens of endangered and threatened species use these waters.

A similar seismic survey is being planned near the state's other nuclear plant at San Onofre, in San Diego County to the south.

A State Lands Commission environmental impact study found on Aug. 20 there would be "unavoidable impacts" to marine life in the area during the San Luis Obispo testing.

But the commission also concluded the "benefit of the project outweighs the unavoidable adverse impacts," said Jennifer DeLeon, a senior environmental scientist at the commission.

While similar high energy seismic surveys have been done on the Pacific Coast — most recently off Washington — PG&E said monitors there did not observe harm to whales or other marine mammals.

The powerful cannons used in these projects can be fatal to animals that stray too close to them. Also, biologists said the loud noises could drive migrating whales and their calves apart, and that mortally wounded whales often sink in the ocean, so it is difficult to see how the tests affect the creatures.

Efforts to mitigate such impacts will reduce, but not eliminate, harm to animals, according to the company and earth scientists.

"The sound source for the PG&E imaging project is a type that has been used for several decades by scientists and industry," Donna Blackman, a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said in an email. "Known cases of possible impacts on marine mammals are very few. An integral part of using this type of system is to have continuous monitoring for whales within close range of the ship."

PG&E said it is spending $8 million on monitoring for the project, said Mark Krausse, a PG&E director.

"If the ship is coming within 1.1 mile of any mammal, not just a marine or listed, but any mammal, we have to shut down," Krausse told the California Fish and Game Commission on Monday.

PG&E wanted to start work Nov. 1 and continue through Dec. 31 — a time window believed to have lower whale traffic off the Central Coast. But the company has asked for an extension of its hearing before the California Coastal Commission, and other agencies are not expected to approve testing permits by then.

Major environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council oppose the plan, saying adequate seismic research already has been done, and that too little is understood about potential long-term impacts of the air guns on the marine environment.

"The marine protected areas were created (so) marine wildlife could thrive without human interference," said Amanda Wallner of Sierra Club California. "We share concern over earthquake risk at Diablo Canyon. However, we don't believe this is the best way or the only way to determine seismic risks."