Bombings and shootings kill at least 14 across Baghdad

A suicide bomber killed four civilians in a crowd outside a police station today in the northern Iraqi city Tal Afar, police said.

At least 12 people were also injured by the blast when the bomber walked into a crowd of people gathering outside the building 93 miles east of the Syrian border, an officer said.

Around the same time, another suicide bomber targeted the convoy of Tal Afar’s mayor.

A child was killed and four other people were wounded in that attack, including the mayor’s driver, said Mosul police Brig. Abdel-Karim Khalaf. The mayor survived, he said.

Also today, two bombs exploded almost simultaneously near a petrol station in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing two civilians and setting several cars on fire, police said.

Three mortar shells landed on a crowd of police recruits outside police headquarters in Fallujah, killing one recruit and wounding three others, police said.

Police also said a bomb went off in Baghdad’s central Karradah neighbourhood, wounding a traffic policeman.

A parked car bomb also exploded at the centre of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, but there was no immediate word on casualties.

Last night, four members of a family died when their house in Baghdad’s Sadr City section was destroyed.

Police initially said the attack was from two mortar shells, but later a police official and witnesses said the home was fired on by US aircraft.

Sadr City is the largest Baghdad enclave of Iraq’s Shiite majority, and a base for the Mahdi Army, a militia led by anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Many mortar and rocket attacks have been launched from the outskirts of Sadr City, and US troops have been conducting raids on homes there in recent weeks.

Just south of Baghdad, gunmen shot dead two workers fixing a water pipe damaged by saboteurs a month earlier, a police colonel said.

The workers were killed yesterday in Madain, about 14 miles south-east of Baghdad, and their bodies were removed from the scene today.

Asked if police caught the killers, the colonel, who refused to give his name, said: “With deep regret, the area is full of orchards and it is difficult to carry out raids here.”

He added that such an operation would require armoured vehicles and aircraft, which the Iraqi police do not have.

In Mosul, 225 miles north-west of Baghdad, four Iraqi soldiers were injured last night when a roadside bomb exploded next to their patrol, police said.