BAGHDAD - Car bombs and shootings claimed at least 27 lives in Iraq on Thursday. Eight people were killed, two of them policemen, and 29 were wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a joint Iraqi military and police checkpoint in central BaghdadÂ’s Kharmana Square, security officials said.A soldier and a civilian died when another checkpoint was targeted by a suicide car bomber in BaghdadÂ’s southwestern Yarmuk district, they added.
In another attack, five workers were killed and two dozen wounded when a bomb on a bus exploded at the entrance to a factory in Iskandiriyah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Baghdad, as employees arrived for work.
Seven people were also reported killed around the restive city of Baquba north of Baghdad, five of them shot dead by gunmen who attacked a string of petrol stations and set them on fire, police said.