Mortar attack kills 12 in Baghdad

A mortar barrage slammed into a mainly Shiite east Baghdad neighbourhood today, killing 12 and wounding 31, police said.

Meanwhile, a major battle raged north of the capital where residents of a Shiite city were fighting what police said was a band of al-Qaida in Iraq gunmen.

Women and children were among the dead and wounded in the Baghdad mortar attack, and some houses in the area were damaged, according to police. The victims were taken to Ibin al-Nafis and Sadr hospitals, police said.

Witnesses said US helicopters were hovering above the attack site.

Hussein Saadon, 56, an owner of a small minibus station in the Ubaidi neighbourhood, drove four victims to the hospital.

“The attack occurred before noon. We heard sounds of four or five explosions, one after the other which hit central Ubaidi. We rushed to the place of the attack and we saw several houses which were hit. Two were badly damaged.

“We also saw a damaged car on the main street where one of the rockets landed. Two dead bodies were inside the car beside other wounded people,” he said.

He said the district had been without electricity for several days and the people were suffering in the heat.

“It fills me with pain and anger to see an attack on such a poor area where there is no presence of police nor army bases or checkpoints,” Saadon said.

In Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, police said more than 1,500 people including sheikhs and dignitaries had gathered near city hall to launch the counteroffensive against al-Qaida fighters who have been regularly firing mortars into the town and kidnapping residents at illegal checkpoints.

At least seven people were killed and 18 wounded in a mortar attack on Khalis on Saturday.

Police said the city militia also said they were determined to push al Qaida fighters out of the nearby town of Hibhib, where the terror organisation’s former leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an air strike.

In central Baghdad, gunmen driving several cars waylaid a minibus headed for Sadr City, the capital's Shiite enclave, and abducted 13 passengers.

The country’s Sunni vice president, meanwhile, promised better treatment and a review for the inmates crowding the country’s prison system in a video showing a boisterous welcome from prisoners jammed inside tarpaulin-covered cages.

In the visit to the crowded eastern Baghdad prison released on videotape Saturday, Tariq al-Hashemi said his moderate Sunni party was working to improve prison conditions and to free the innocent, though the party itself has not taken part in the Cabinet since August 1.

A Sunni political alliance, the Accordance Front, which includes al-Hashemi’s Iraqi Islamic Party has pulled its five ministers out of the government, saying Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki failed to respond to a set of demands, including the release of security detainees held without charges.

Rights groups also have complained about random detentions and overcrowding in Iraq’s prisons.

Most of the inmates are believed to be Sunnis accused of participating in the insurgency, but critics say many are innocent and have been held for long periods without charge.