Six people were killed and 25 injured yesterday in scattered violence around Iraq, including a mortar attack on the Health Ministry and a car bombing targeting a police patrol in Baghdad.
The Health Ministry in northern Baghdad was hit by two mortar shells at 8:40am, which slammed into the building and its garden, seriously injuring three civilians, police Lieutenant Ahmed Mohammed Ali said. The attackers were not identified.
In eastern Baghdad a car bomb targeting a police patrol killed two people and wounded 13.
PHOTO: AFP
The bomb was detonated in a parked car as the patrol went by at 10:15am. One policeman was among the dead, while five were injured, police Lieutenant Bilal Ali said.
An Iraqi soldier also died in east Baghdad in a morning attack, police said. The soldier was gunned down in his car on his way to report to his unit at 7:30am.
Meanwhile, two more Iraqi soldiers were killed and two injured when a suicide car bomber slammed into a checkpoint in Tal Afar, 420km northwest of Baghdad. The soldiers opened fire on the car as it sped toward the checkpoint, but were unable to prevent the detonation, police said.
In Mosul, a bomb blast wounded two civilians, police said.
One more person was killed and five others wounded in Al-Musayyab, south of Baghdad, when their house was hit with a mortar shell, police said.
Police also found more apparent victims of sectarian death squads in the eastern side of the capital, discovering five bodies bearing signs of torture, blindfolded with their hands and legs bound, police said.
Police in Baghdad yesterday updated the casualty toll in the deadly bombing of a kerosene truck on a crowded street on Saturday, stating that it was now at 38 killed and 42 injured.
A Sunni group claiming responsibility for the attack in Baghdad's Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum, said it was in revenge for an attack on Friday by a suspected Shiite death squad on Sunni Arab homes and mosques that killed four people in the capital.
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