Woman killed in drive-by shooting in Iraq

A female official with the Census Department was shot dead today while she was riding to work with her husband in northern Iraq, police said.

Gunmen in two cars opened fire on the woman about 9.30am as her husband was driving her to work at the Nationalities and Census Department in Mosul, 220 miles north-west of Baghdad, police Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri said.

At least five other people were killed in morning attacks in the Baghdad area as frustration is mounting over delays in the implementation of a US-Iraqi security operation to quell the sectarian violence that has left the capital a battlefield.

Two mortar shells landed on houses in a mainly Sunni area in north-eastern Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding seven, police said.

Three people also were killed in a drive-by shooting as they were driving in the volatile Sunni Yarmouk neighbourhood in a western part of the capital, according to police.

A roadside bomb also struck a joint US-Iraqi patrol on a highway east of Baghdad, killing an Iraqi police officer and wounding three others, police said.

Roadside bombs also killed a woman and wounded two other people in Suwarah, 25 miles south of the capital, as well as the driver of a private car elsewhere in a nearby area, police said.

The US military said it was investigating reports that an aircraft went down today in Iraq.

Witnesses said a helicopter had gone down in a field in the Sheikh Amir area north-west of Baghdad, sending smoke rising from the scene, in a Sunni-dominated area between the Taji air base 12 miles north of Baghdad and Garma, 20 miles to the west of the capital.

“We are looking into initial reports of a possible aircraft down,” US military spokeswoman Lt Col Josslyn Aberle said.

The reports came five days after a US Army helicopter crashed in a hail of gunfire north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said – the fourth helicopter lost in Iraq in a two-week span.

The US command said two crew members were killed in that crash.