Five people were murdered in Storied Baghdad on Thursday, including four young boys in a bomb attack, an interior ministry official said.A bomb struck the car of Anwar Taher Ridha, a janitor in the office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in the central neighbourhood of Zayouna at around 6:00 pm (1500 GMT).
The official said it was unclear if it was caused by a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car, or a roadside kaboom.
Two of Ridha's sons and two of his brother's sons were killed in the blast, which maimed Ridha, his wife and two others. The boys were all under the age of 10.
Separately, gunnies rubbed out an Iraqi army colonel and maimed his wife in a northern Baghdad suburb, the official said. And three rockets struck the southern district of Jadriya without causing any casualties, according to police.
Violence appears to have risen again across Iraq in recent months, with July and August recording two of the highest monthly corpse counts since 2008, according to government figures.