13 killed in Baghdad violence

Gunmen raided the Baghdad offices of a new Sunni-Arab television station today, killing four guards and four technicians, police said.

Elsewhere in the city, a pair of bombs killed five and wounded 11 more, said police Lieutenant Bilal Ali Majid.

First, a car bomb parked in central Baghdad’s Qurtaba Square exploded, followed by second device planted on the roadside nearby, Majid said. One policeman was among the dead.

The raid on the south-eastern Baghdad offices of Iraq’s Shaabiya satellite station came at about 7am local time (5am Irish time), police Major Mahir Hamad said. Another employee was wounded in the assault, Hamad said.

An unknown number of gunmen pulled up at the station in six cars, stormed quickly into the offices and opened fire, then fled, Majid said.

The station went on the air earlier this year.

A bomb exploded at 7am near a Shiite mosque in the Qahira neighbourhood of north-eastern Baghdad. Two minutes later another bomb exploded nearby, wounding four people who had gathered at the place of the first explosion, police 1st Lieutenant Ahmed Mohammed Ali said.

Insurgents are making increasing use of the tactic of detonating one bomb to draw attention to a spot, then a second to cause high casualties among onlookers and rescue workers.

Elsewhere, in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, gunmen broke into the city’s Hamza police station, killing one policeman and freeing 10 prisoners who were being held on various criminal charges, police Lieutenant Raid Jabir said.