Twenty nine villagers were killed by men wearing Iraqi military uniforms who stormed their homes north of Baghdad on Monday, an Iraqi security official said on Tuesday. Colonel Raghib Rawi, spokesman for security operations in Diyala province, said a large number of militants surrounded Duwailiya village, north of the city of Baquba, on Monday afternoon and then opened fire. There were four people wounded in the attack, which he blamed on militants fleeing U.S. and Iraqi security forces who last month launched a major operation in Baquba, the capital of the religiously mixed Diyala province. Thousands of troops swept into Baquba to drive out an estimated several hundred al Qaeda militants who had turned the city into a stronghold. But U.S. commanders say that many of the most senior al Qaeda fighters departed before their net closed. In another attack, three family members were killed and five others, belonging to the same family, injured in a car explosion eastern Baghdad on Monday evening, according to eyewitnesses. An Iraqi man, who was abducted by unknown militants, had just returned home at Ghadir suburb near Mislon Square, east of Baghdad, when his car exploded in the garage of his house, leaving him and another two members of his family dead. Five members of the just-freed Iraqi hostage were also injured and the house was partially damaged in the blast, eyewitnesses said. Immediately, the Iraqi police cordoned off the car explosion site while neighbors were thrown in panic over the incident. Maj. Gen. Abdel-Karim Khalaf, chief of the National Control Center of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, condemned the explosion as a "cowardly act", urging people to inform the Iraqi police of abduction incidents.
In another incident reported on Tuesday, four people were killed by a car bomb parked near the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, Iraqi police said. Police said five were wounded in the attack, in a car park opposite the Iranian embassy in the upscale Karadat Maryam district near the fortified Green Zone compound. The Iranian embassy is near to, but not inside the Green Zone.
Earlier on Monday, bomb attacks in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk killed at least 85 people and wounded more than 180 others. A bomber detonated a lorry near the offices of a Kurdish political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), causing most of the casualties. Two other bombs later went off in the city. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Two journalists including a Swedish passport holder of Kurdish origin were among 85 people killed on Monday by a massive truck bomb in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a newspaper said on Tuesday. Sports reporter Majeed Mohammed, and writer/researcher Mustafa Gaimayani were killed when the blast damaged the offices of the Hawal Media Institute, its chairman Hashwan Dawoudi said. Gaimayani had a Swedish passport and his family all live in that country, but he had moved to Kirkuk about five months ago to join the institute, Dawoudi said. Hawal produces a weekly newspaper from Kirkuk in Kurdish and a sister newspaper in Arabic called Al-Nabaa.
Three Iraqis working for Reuters were killed in Baghdad last week, as well as an Iraqi reporter for the New York Times. Reporters Without Borders say at least 194 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, making it the most dangerous place in the world to report. The vast majority of the deaths have been Iraqi.