Suicide bomber kills eight as 19 Iraqis die in attacks

A SUICIDE bomber detonated an explosive belt yesterday in a line of Iraqis waiting to receive government payments, killing eight people and wounding about 30, including children, police said.

Eleven other people were killed in attacks elsewhere in the country, including five members of a Shi’ite religious party and four policemen, among them a colonel.

The suicide attack occurred in a mostly Shi’ite eastern district of Baghdad as people lined up at a bank yesterday morning to receive government checks to compensate for incomplete food rations.

Police lieutenant Ali Abbas said the attacker joined the line and blew himself up while security guards were searching people before allowing them to enter the bank.

Eight people were killed and at least 30 wounded, said police lieutenant Ali Mittab and Raid Jabbar, a medic at the Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken. The wounded included three children and nine women, Lt Abbas said.

Meanwhile, British military police said they had arrested one man in their investigation of a video that appeared to show soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq. The Ministry of Defence declined to identify the man, who was arrested on Sunday night.

Video images first reported by the News of the World, a Sunday newspaper, appeared to show soldiers dragging several young Iraqis into a compound and beating them with fists and batons. The newspaper said the video was filmed in southern Iraq by a corporal two years ago.

It did not name the soldier or the unit involved. Photos of US troops tormenting and humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in 2003 caused worldwide revulsion, and British troops have faced other allegations of abuse.

Elsewhere in Iraq, gunmen killed three brothers and two of their sons in an attack on a street in Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, police said.

All five were identified as members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country’s leading Shi’ite political party, police said.

A roadside bomb attack in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, killed two policemen and wounded one, police said. Gunmen also shot dead a policeman protecting electricity generating facilities near a hospital in Baghdad’s Sadr City.

In the volatile western city of Ramadi, insurgents killed a police colonel as he drove to work, said Lt Mohsen al-Dulaimi. Drive-by gunmen also killed an Oil Ministry employee as he was driving in western Baghdad and another man in Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, police said.