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irefighters work at the site of a bomb attack in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, Iraq,
BAGHDAD: A spate of shootings and bombings targeting Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad yeserday killed at least 10 people, while a prisoner on death row escaped from police custody south of the capital.
The attacks, which killed five policemen and three anti-Qaeda militiamen and left more than 20 people wounded, came after Iraqi police were targeted on Sunday night.
Yesterday’s heaviest toll came in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, 175km north of Baghdad.
Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the town centre, killing two policemen and wounding two more before fleeing the scene, a security official said. A doctor confirmed the toll.
Also in Tuz Khurmatu, a car bomb at one of the main entrances to the town killed a policeman and wounded six other people —five civilians and a policeman, the officials said.
In another gun attack, militants broke into the home of two brothers, both of them anti-Al Qaeda militiamen, in the desert region west of the city of Samarra, which lies around 110km north of Baghdad.
They killed them and their father at around 4am (0100 GMT), a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor in Samarra’s main hospital said.
The brothers were members of the Sahwa (Awakening) militia, comprised of Sunni Arab tribesmen who sided with the US military against Al Qaeda from late 2006, helping to turn the tide of Iraq’s insurgency. They are frequently targeted by Sunni militants who regard them as traitors.
Another Sahwa fighter was killed by a magnetic “sticky bomb” attached to his car in the town of Hawijah, 230km north of Baghdad, security and medical officials said.
A bombing in the main northern city of Mosul, and a shooting just south of the city, left two people dead — a policeman and a young child — and three civilians wounded, security and medical officials said. Both attacks targeted security forces.
And in the tinderbox northern oil city of Kirkuk, two car bombs near the provincial government headquarters killed a policeman and wounded eight other people, a security official said. A hospital doctor confirmed the toll.
In Baghdad, a shooting at an army checkpoint in the south of the city wounded three soldiers, an interior ministry official said. A medical source said one of the three died.
AFP
