Iraq violence kills 25

Bombings and drive-by shootings killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more today around Iraq.

Bombings and drive-by shootings killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more today around Iraq.

The deadliest attack struck civilians in the small town of Suwayrah, near Baghdad, as a pair of bombs – one in a parked car and the other planted along a road – killed eight passers-by and wounded 71, according to an Iraqi police official and a hospital worker in the nearby city of Kut.

Iraqi military and police fanned out across the capital after gunmen in speeding cars attacked security checkpoints and military patrols in the early hours, officials said. At least 10 people were killed in those attacks.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the attacks seemed to be a deliberate attempt by insurgents to show they are still able to hit in the heart of the capital despite recent successes by US and Iraqi security forces in dismantling terror networks in Iraq.

Additional checkpoints were set up around Baghdad. Uniformed police escorting a car with a flag-draped casket – believed to be one of the victims – fired their guns into the air and blared their sirens as they raced down a busy street in the central Baghdad neighbourhood of Karradah.

The attacks come at a precarious time as Iraq awaits a new government to be formed more than two months after landmark parliamentary elections and worries that insurgents will try to exploit the ongoing political uncertainty to stoke new violence.

At least 17 people were injured in the Baghdad attacks.

The first attack came in western Baghdad when gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on an army patrol, killing one soldier and injuring another, Iraqi officials said.

That incident was followed by at least six other attacks. Although most of them were drive-by shootings, a roadside bomb in western Baghdad targeting a police patrol killed three civilians.

It was not immediately known who was behind the attacks or how many people were involved in the incidents which took place over two and a half hours in five different neighbourhoods across the capital.

Meanwhile in the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul, at least two people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near a checkpoint, according to army colonel Rebwar Younis.

The attack came near a joint security checkpoint run by Iraqi troops and Kurdish security forces known as the peshmerga, he said. Both of the dead were peshmerga.

In Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad, city mayor Mohammed Jassam was injured when bombs in parked cars targeted his convoy. In all, five people were killed and 18 injured in the attack, said a city police official.

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