Ten killed in fresh Iraq violence

BAGHDAD - At least 10 people were killed and 23 injured Monday in separate attacks across Iraq, police said, as poll workers continued to count the votes from last week’s parliamentary elections.

The March 7 polls are widely seen as a key test of Iraq’s stability ahead of US combat troops’ withdrawal from the country by the end of the year. Top US officials have tied US soldiers’ withdrawal from Iraq to a period of calm following the elections.

Monday morning started with the assassination of a Sunni religious leader to the west of Baghdad.

Sheikh Abdel-Rahman al-Karbuli was leaving the mosque where he had just led dawn prayers in al-Khaldiya, roughly 80 kilometres west of the capital, when a bomb exploded and killed him instantly, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

Hours later, a car bomb struck the centre of Falluja, roughly 10 kilometres east of the first explosion, killing at least seven people, injuring 13, and badly damaging cars and buildings in the blast radius, police said.

The Falluja attack was the deadliest single attack since the elections.

In the northern city of Mosul, two policemen were killed and three injured Monday in separate attacks.

“A bomb went off near a police patrol in al-Hadbaa area, eastern Mosul, leaving one policeman killed and three injured,” police said.

Another policeman was killed when an unidentified gunman threw a grenade at a checkpoint in the Khazraj area, western Mosul, the police said.

Despite successive security pushes that police say have netted hundreds of suspected insurgents in the past year, Mosul still suffers near-daily fatal attacks.