Eight killed in Iraq rubbish-bin blast

Violence raked the Iraqi capital Baghdad today, with at least 17 people killed by bomb and mortar attacks by early afternoon.

A bomb placed in a bin killed at least eight people and wounded 18 in a central Baghdad neighbourhood shortly after noon today, police said.

Within minutes two other car bombs blew up in quick succession in the south of the city, killing at least seven and wounding 40.

Two other people were killed in the capital when a mortar round slammed into a second central Baghdad neighbourhood and a bomb hidden in rubbish exploded on the city’s east side, police reported.

The bomb in Baghdad’s Sheikh Omar district that killed eight, also left 18 wounded, many of them badly burned in a huge fire that broke out, doctors at al-Kindi Hospital said.

In the northern city of Mosul, the deputy governor of Nineveh province was wounded along with three bodyguards when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, said security official Hisham al-Hamdani.

In Baghdad, gunmen wearing police uniforms and using police cars attacked an armoured truck delivering cash, kidnapped five bank officials and made off with 500 million dinars (£175,000), police said.