Gunmen killed 22 passengers on a bus coming from Syria late on Monday in a desert region of Iraq’s western province of Anbar, police general Haider Rzayj said.
“Some armed men stopped the bus coming from Syria Monday around 9:30pm, they made the 22 passengers get off the bus and killed them with automatic weapons,” he said.
“All the victims are men and their bloodied bodies were stretched out on the ground,” he added.
The incident took place about 300km west of Baghdad, in a sector under the control of the Iraqi Army.
Since the US-led invasion in 2003, the mainly Sunni province of Anbar has been a stronghold of al-Qaeda, whose members have killed numerous Iraqis and foreigners traveling the roads to Jordan and Syria.
While tribal militias have cracked down on insurgents since 2007, they have not completely eliminated them.
Earlier on Monday, in a separate incident, gunmen shot dead a Sunni imam hostile to al-Qaeda in the troubled city of Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad, a local security official said.
The imam, who was known for his outspoken criticism of al-Qaeda, was killed on his way to the mosque for morning prayers, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the main northern city of Mosul, a car bomb wounded six people, including five policemen, a police officer said.
And in another attack, a vehicle packed with explosives wounded two people in Iskandariyah just south of Baghdad, another police officer said. Both sources declined to be identified.
Violence is down across Iraq from its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common.
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