Gunmen kill senior Baghdad policeman

Scattered attacks across Baghdad left two policemen dead today, including a senior police official.

Lt Col Imad Hatam, deputy director of the Kazimiyah police station in the north of Iraq’s capital, was killed by unknown gunmen as he was leaving his home for work, a hospital official confirmed.

Two mortar shells fell near Ministry of Interior and the police academy in central Baghdad, killing one officer, an Iraq police official said.

A Baghdad city employee was seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad as he headed to work.

About 30 miles south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing a child and injuring six other civilians, police said.

It happened at about 9am near Haswa on the road leading from the capital to Hillah, said a police spokesman.

No soldiers were reported injured but the bomb hit a minibus carrying civilian passengers, killing the girl and wounding six other people.

Later, gunmen shot dead Saad Kadhim, a captain in the new Iraqi intelligence service, in the western Baghdad neighbourhood of Jihad, a police spokesman said.