30 killed, over 100 hurt in attacks in Iraq

BAGHDAD - At least 30 people were killed and more than 100 were injured Monday in a series of bombings and armed attacks in Iraq, according to the police, army and state media.

Eight people were killed and 70 injured when a bomb blast near a mosque in the city of Waset, around 170 km southeast of the capital Baghdad, state television reported.

The attack was preceded by a bombing in the city’s central market, in which no one was injured.

Three people were, meanwhile, killed and 16 were injured by car bomb near the municipal headquarters in al-Taremeya, just north of Baghdad, according to reports.

A high-ranking police officer was killed and six policemen were injured by a bomb targeting their patrol unit in the city of al-Halla, 100 km south of Baghdad.

A senior official in the al-Khales provincial council, near the northern city of Baquba, was assassinated.

“A group of gunmen with suspected links to al-Qaeda attacked Laith Hassan, head of the provincial council’s committee for Displaced People, in his home, shooting and killing him,” a police source told DPA.

Five members of the Iraqi army were killed in bomb attacks targeting checkpoints in the regions of al-Ghazaleya, al-Adl, and al-Jihad. Six people were injured in the attacks.

Five members of the army were shot and killed by gunmen at a checkpoint in the neighbourhood of New Baghdad in the eastern part of the capital, witnesses said.

Two people were killed and three injured when a bomb exploded in a shop in Alexandria, some 60 kilometres away to the south, police told DPA.

Two members of the Kurdish Peshmerga security forces were killed, and others were injured, in a suicide bombing in the northern city of Mosul, army sources said.

The bomber detonated his explosives in a car near a checkpoint jointly run by the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga forces.

Some 60 km west of Baghdad, in various parts of the city of Fallujah, four people were killed and 10 injured in a series of bombings targeting the homes of police officers.

The Iraqi army arrested seven suspected terrorists in different areas of the city of Baquba, and deactivated five explosive devices, army sources said.