[Dawn] A spate of violence across Iraq killed nine people on Sunday as officials said that repairs to government offices struck by massive bombings last week will cost around 16 million dollars.| A good thing they've got all that oil to sell. |
In Sunday's deadliest attack, five people were killed and 37 wounded when a bomb hidden in a cooler on the back of a bicycle exploded in the Shia city of Mussayib in Babil province at around 0630 GMT.
Police said the bicycle had been left at the market in Mussayib, 60 kilometres south of Baghdad.
The western Iraqi city of Ramadi, capital of the predominantly Sunni province of Al-Anbar, a former rebel stronghold, was targeted by two suicide bombings, police said.
One of the attackers detonated a car bomb at the city's western entrance, killing two people and wounding four others, according to Colonel Jabbar Ajaj.
Ajaj added that another suicide attacker blew himself up near a police station outside Ramadi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Baghdad, but killed only himself. No one was wounded.
| Terror FAIL. |
The 'sticky bomb' attack also wounded 12 people, including five women, medical and security officials said.
Meanwhile, a government employee was killed and two civilians were wounded in two attacks in the restive northern city of Mosul.
The civil servant was shot dead by gunmen as he was driving his car in the west of the city, 350 kilometres north of the capital, a police officer said.
The officer added that two civilians were wounded when a parked car bomb exploded, also in western Mosul, apparently targeting an Iraqi army patrol.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, authorities have decided to allocate around 16 million dollars to rebuild the ministries of justice and public works and the Baghdad provincial government building, all damaged in October 25's huge blasts.
More than 150 people were killed that day in near-simultaneous vehicle suicide attacks targeting the government buildings at busy Baghdad intersections, in Iraq's deadliest day of violence in more than two years.
The decision to repair the government buildings was taken at a cabinet meeting, during which ministers allocated 16 billion dinars (13.7 million dollars) for the justice and public works ministries.
'The cabinet agreed that the ministry of finance should transfer the money... to fix and renovate the ministries of justice and municipalities,' a government statement said.
Nine billion dinars will be set aside for the ministry of justice while the remainder would be devoted to the ministry of public works.
Baghdad Governor Salah Abdul Razzaq told AFP that the provincial government had earmarked three billion dinars to repair its offices.
He criticised the central government, however, for not funding those renovations, noting that 'even though we are a local government, it was the same attack, the same damage, the same disaster.'
UN Assistant Secretary General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco arrived in Baghdad Sunday, and will meet with Iraqi officials on Monday, Said Arikat, the spokesman for the UN mission, said. A UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Fernandez-Taranco would meet cabinet ministers and foreign ministry officials. The envoy's trip follows intense lobbying by Iraq for an independent probe into the massive attacks in central Baghdad.