Iraqi gunmen kill police commando and lawyer

Assailants in speeding cars gunned down a police commando as he was leaving his house in south Baghdad today, and drive-by shooters killed a lawyer as she got out of a taxi in the southern city of Basra, police said.

A dozen Iraqis were wounded in bombings and other attacks in the capital.

The US military reported the death of an American soldier in Fallujah, west of Baghdad in the volatile province of Anbar.

The soldier with the 9th Naval Construction Regiment died on Tuesday from wounds sustained in fighting, the military said.

Police discovered the body of a man in his 40s who had been strangled in Baghdad’s northern neighbourhood of Hurriyah, likely yet another in the capital’s underground battle of revenge killings between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.