More than three dozen killed in Iraq violence
More than three dozen people were killed in violence around Iraq today, including a state TV employee, a judge and three people in a morning suicide attack on a fish market in Baghdad that wounded 19 others.
The bomber detonated a belt rigged with explosives in the outdoor market in the primarily Sunni area of Sadiyah, south-western Baghdad, at 7.10am, police Lt Maitham Abdul Razzaq said.
In the northern city of Mosul, Jassim Hammad Ibrahim, who was working as a driver for state-run Iraqia TV, was killed in a drive-by shooting, Police Maj. Ahmed Khalid said. Mosul’s Iraqia TV station manager Ghazi Faisal confirmed Ibrahim’s death, adding that he had been going shopping when killed by the unknown assailants.
In Hay, 140 miles south of Baghdad, unidentified gunmen shot and killed Naeem Manei, an assistant judge in the Hay court, police said.
A mortar attack on a Shiite area of Baghdad’s Dora neighbourhood, killed one civilian and injured 17 others, police said.
In an afternoon mortar attack on a primarily Sunni neighbourhood in north-eastern Baghdad, five more civilians were killed and 22 others injured when rounds hit four houses, police 1st Lt Ahmed Mohamed Ali said.
In another Baghdad attack, two civilians were injured when a roadside bomb targeting an American convoy blew up, police 1st Lt. Bilal Ali Majid said. There were no immediate reports of U.S. casualties.
One civilian was killed and two more wounded in a rocket attack on a residential neighbourhood in northern Baghdad, police said.
Another three people were killed and nine more injured when a parked car bomb blew up near a Shiite mosque in downtown Baghdad. The attack came in Karradah, a Shiite neighbourhood at 9am, police 1st Lt Thair Mahmoud said.
About 20 miles south of Baghdad, mortar shells landed on a residential area in Mahmoudiya, killing one person and wounding five others, Iraqi army Capt. Odai Abdel-Rhida said.
Two pedestrians were killed in a drive-by shooting in Mosul, 225 miles north-west of Baghdad, police said.
One civilian was killed and three others were injured when unidentified gunmen stormed the house of a Shiite family in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, police said.
Meanwhile, authorities in Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, said four gunmen were killed in a morning clash with police in the city.
Police also found seven bodies in an area north of Baqouba, identified as being the father, three sons and three other relatives from a Shiite family.
Five more people, whom neighbours said were a Shiite family and their driver preparing to flee their home after receiving threats, were killed in the Gatoun area of Baquoba, police said. The bodies of a woman and two men lay in the street after the attack, black smoke billowing out of the family’s truck that the assailants set fire to before fleeing.
In addition, Baqouba General Hospital doctor Ahmed Fuad said the hospital had received the bodies of eight other people who had been shot today and two who had been killed in a roadside bombing.
In an area near Amarah, 200 miles south-east of Baghdad, police found the body of Col Adnan Hussein al Hreshawi, a former Iraqi officer in Saddam Hussein’s army. His hands were cuffed, and he had been shot in the head and other parts of the body, police Capt Hussein Kareem said.
