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| Iraq |
| Spate of attacks kill 18 in Iraq despite security |
| 2009-12-26 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Eighteen people including six Shiite worshippers were killed in a spate of attacks across Iraq on Friday, despite ramped up security for Christmas Day and Shiite Ashura rituals. Also among the dead were three teachers in northern Iraq and a Kurdish peshmerga security force member while dozens of others were wounded. In eastern Baghdad's Sadr City district, a roadside bomb killed six people and wounded 26 when it struck a procession marking the Ashura commemorations. Most casualties were children, some of whom were under the age of 13, defense and interior ministry officials said on condition of anonymity. The afternoon attack came just days ahead of the climax on Sunday of the 10-day rituals to commemorate Ashura, which marks the killing of Shiite Imam Hussein in 680. Later at night, four people were killed and five wounded by mortars fired into the residential area of Obaidi, in eastern Baghdad, said a spokesman for the military command in the capital. In the restive northern city of Mosul, meanwhile, three teachers, who were working with Iraq's census authorities, were found shot dead, according to a police officer who did not want to be named. Also in Mosul one civilian was killed and another was wounded by a bomb targeting a police patrol in the center of the city while in the western part of town police said they found the corpse of a strangled woman. Violence Meanwhile, in the central province of Diyala, two brothers of Mustafa al-Azawi, the Sunni Arab mayor of the town of Mansuriyah, were found dead after they were kidnapped on Friday morning, police said. The two men were aged 29 and 24. Azawi has two other brothers. A suicide car bomb along a road connecting the northern Iraqi towns of Rabiyaa, near the Syrian border, and Sinoosi also killed a Kurdish peshmerga security force member and wounded 15 others, a force spokesman said. "Some of the wounded are badly injured and they have been transferred to Zakho (a town in Kurdistan) for medical treatment," Colonel Simi Borsli said. The car bomb was targeting a patrol of the peshmerga, the main security force in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. The latest violence follows a spate of attacks across Iraq on Thursday in which dozens of people died. A hospital official put the final toll from twin bomb attacks at a bus station in the southern town of Hilla on Thursday at 19 dead and 80 wounded, up from an earlier death toll of 15. Iraqi authorities have stepped up security in the run-up to Christmas and Ashura deploying more security forces in cities with significant Christian populations such as Baghdad, Mosul and the ethnically-mixed northern city of Kirkuk. Some 46,000 policemen and soldiers have also been deployed in the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, the latter of which is where Imam Hussein is buried and where around one million people are due to visit for Ashura. Security for Christians was increased after the army received intelligence of attacks targeting members of the minority community around Christmas. |
| Posted by:Fred |