Violence escalates in northern Iraq

Two dozen people have died in a surge of violence in northern Iraq, including 10 at a football game hit by a suicide car bombing, police said, while the country’s spiralling sectarian and political bloodshed killed at least 19 others elsewhere.

Two American soldiers were killed in restive Anbar province west of the capital, the US command said. It said only that they died “due to enemy action.”

The suicide driver struck during a football match between local teams in Hadhra, 300 kilometres (180 miles) north of Baghdad.

Seven of the dead were spectators and the other three were policemen providing security for the game, police Col. Abdul Karim Ahmed Khalaf said. Six civilians and nine officers were wounded, he said.

The attack occurred the day after a pair of bombs exploded on a football field in Baghdad, killing 11 young players and spectators. No group claimed responsibility for either attack, and it was unclear if they were part of a pattern.

In Mosul, 70 kilometres (45 miles) north of Hadhra, armed clashes erupted yesterday after a car bomb killed four police officers, including a colonel. The shooting spread over several blocks on the eastern side of the Tigris River.

Eight insurgents were killed and five cars rigged with explosives were found before order was restored, police Maj. Gen. Withiq al-Hamdani said.

Also yesterday, two people were killed and four wounded when three mortar shells exploded in a religiously mixed suburb near Baghdad, police Lt. Bilal Ali Majid said. Earlier in the day, an engineer was fatally shot in the capital and an unidentified body was found elsewhere in the city, police said.

A group of Shiites returning home in a bus after attending a pro-Hezbollah demonstration in Baghdad came under fire from unidentified gunmen yesterday, and at least 14 three people were injured, Rasool Qasim al Zibon, a spokesman of the Imam Ali hospital in Baghdad, said.

He quoted relatives as saying three people were killed but this could not be independently confirmed.

Five other buses carrying Shiite demonstrators also came under attack by gunmen elsewhere, injuring 20 people, police Capt. Firas Quity said.

In Baghdad, unidentified gunmen rushed into a mobile phone shop, killing the owner, Ahmed Hassan, and injuring his two brothers late, Dr. Haidar al Ubaidi of al Noaman hospital said.

In Kut, 160 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad, six bodies were found in the Tigris, four of them decapitated, officials said. It appeared they were victims of sectarian death squads responsible for escalating Sunni-Shiite conflict. Another unidentified body of a man was found in al-Azeziya, 90 kilometre south of Baghdad, police 1st Lt. Fikrat Mohammed Hussein said.

Police said gunmen barged into the home of a Shiite family late on Thursday in Dujail, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Baghdad, killing four and wounding eight.

Also yesterday, the US military said American forces killed at least three insurgents during an air strike and multiple raids southeast of Baghdad the day before.