Six killed in scattered violence in Iraq

Six people were killed and 25 injured today in scattered violence around Iraq, including a mortar attack on the Health Ministry and a car bombing targeting a police patrol in Baghdad.

The Health Ministry in northern Baghdad was hit by two mortar shells at 8:40am (5.40am Irish time), which slammed into the building and its garden, seriously injuring three civilians, police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said. The attackers were not identified.

In eastern Baghdad a car bomb targeting a police patrol killed two people and wounded 13.

The bomb was detonated in a parked car as the patrol went by at 10:15am (7.15am Irish time). One policeman was among the dead, while five were injured, police Lt. Bilal Ali said.

An Iraqi soldier also died in east Baghdad in a morning attack, police said. The soldier was gunned down in his car on his way to report to his unit at 7:30am (4.30am Irish time).

Meanwhile, two more Iraqi soldiers were killed and another two injured when a suicide car bomber slammed into a checkpoint in Tal Afar, 260 miles north-west of Baghdad. The soldiers opened fire on the car as it sped toward the checkpoint but were unable to prevent the detonation, police said.

In Mosul, some 225 miles north-west of Baghdad, a bomb blast wounded two civilians, police said.

One more person was killed and five others wounded in the town of Al-Musayyab south of Baghdad in the Babil province when their house was hit with a mortar shell, police said.

Police also found more apparent victims of sectarian death squads in the capital, discovering five bodies bearing signs of torture, blindfolded with their hands and legs bound, in eastern Baghdad, police said.

Police in Baghdad updated the casualty toll in the deadly bombing of a kerosene truck on a crowded street on Saturday to 38 killed and 42 injured.

A Sunni group claiming responsibility for the attack in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum, said it was in revenge for a Friday attack by a suspected Shiite death squad on Sunni Arab homes and mosques that killed four people in the capital.

Also on Saturday, a senior officer was attacked in Tikrit after having his Ramadan fast-breaking dinner.

Police Col. Ismaiel Chehayyan was at a friend’s house in Tikrit city centre when unknown assailants stormed the building, killing the officer and wounding the host, police said.