Nine killed in Iraq gun attacks
Gunmen have killed at least nine people in separate attacks in northern Iraq and in the capital Baghdad.
Assailants opened fire at a telephone exchange centre in the Alwiya commercial area of central Baghdad early this morning, when employees would have just started work, killing a man and a woman, said police 1st Lt. Mohammed Khayon.
Late last night, clashes between gunmen and police in the al-Maalif area of southern Baghdad killed two policemen, said police 1st Lt. Ahmed Hameed.
A roadside bomb targeting a US military patrol exploded this morning near central Baghdad’s al-Jadriya bridge, wounding an Iraqi civilian, police 1st Lt. Moataz Salahuldin said.
In the eastern part of the capital, authorities found the bodies of two men dumped in the street in the al-Ubaidi district. Both bodies had their hands and feet tied, were in civilian clothes and had been shot in the head and chest, said police Maj. Mahir Hamad Mosa.
Elsewhere in Iraq, gunmen in two cars ambushed a bus carrying oil employees in northern Iraq late yesterday, killing four and injuring another, police said.
The bus had been taking the employees from Beiji, the country’s biggest refinery 155 miles north of Baghdad, to Tuz Khormato district, some 75 miles south-east of Beiji, police Capt. Khalid Sabah said.
Iraq’s oil infrastructure is frequently targeted by insurgents who blow up pipelines and target oil workers in attacks. The country has struggled to resume oil production to pre-war levels of about 2.5 million to 3 million barrels a day.
In the city of Kut, 100 miles south-east of Baghdad, gunmen killed a local policeman when they broke into his house at dawn in the Jihad neighbourhood, police 1st Lt. Mohamed al-Shamari said.
