At least 24 killed in Iraq violence

A parked car bomb exploded today in Baghdad’s upmarket Mansour neighbourhood, killing at least six people and wounding 18 others.

Iraqi forces cordoned off the area in western Baghdad. Police had no further details on the explosion.

Violence overnight and today resulted in at least 24 people being killed around Iraq, police and military officials said.

In Middadiyah, a town just outside Baqouba north-east of the capital, a roadside bomb next to a market killed at least four people and wounded 24 others.

It was the second attack in the Baqouba area following an attack late yesterday by gunmen who assaulted a Shiite mosque in a town with mortars and assault rifles, killing seven people and wounding three.

In northern Mosul, gunmen attacked and killed four unidentified Kurds and injured another, said Ahmed Abdul-Aziz, a doctor at of Jumhouri Hospital.

A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in eastern Baghdad’s Zaiyouna neighbourhood, wounding three police officers and a civilian, police said.

Gunmen killed police brigadier Ziad Ramzi in central Mosul city. The officer was in plain clothes when he was shot, said Nineveh police brigadier Saeid Ahmeed.

Two armed men were killed and four Iraqi soldiers were injured in a firefight between Iraqi forces and gunmen in the Qadisiyah area in eastern Rawah, 175 miles north-west of Baghdad, the Iraqi military said.

The mosque attack occurred yesterday at 9pm local time in the town of Bani Saad just south of Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, Diyala provincial police.

Bani Saad is 12 miles south of Baqouba and police said the attack began when six mortar rounds were fired at the Huseiniyat Bani Saad mosque, followed by an assault.

The gunmen then planted explosives around the mosque and detonated them, damaging the structure, police said.

The mosque is located in the middle of the town’s open-air market area and is the only Shiite mosque in the town.

Reporters on the scene said the area was surrounded by Iraqi army forces and members of the Mahdi armi, a Shiite militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The attack occurred in a mixed but volatile region that in recent months has seen horrific acts of sectarian violence. Jordanian born-terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Sunni extremist who long sought to start a sectarian war in Iraq, was killed just outside Baqouba in an American airstrike on June 7.