More deaths in Iraq as clashes continue
Bombings and running street battles in five Iraqi cities have resulted in at least four deaths and dozens of injuries.
Three bombs in Baghdad on Thursday targeted a US convoy in the Zaituna district in the capital’s northeast and also wounded three Iraqi civilians.
A second blast on Saadun Street in the city centre also targeted US vehicles but a third bomb destroyed a shop selling alcohol in the Batawin district and injured five Iraqi civilians.
Just hours earlier, in the western city of Ramadi, local journalists told Aljazeera that four Iraqis were shot dead by US snipers.
And in the northern city of Mosul, the Iraqi National Guard building came under mortar attack. One shell is believed to have missed its target and wounded two civilians who lived close by.
Five Iraqi police officers in the city were also seriously injured when their joint patrol with US troops came under heavy attack.
US casualties
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US forces also came under suffered casualties in an attack in Baquba, northeast of the capital.
An unknown number of soldiers were wounded when a military vehicle was destroyed just in front of an army headquarters building north of the city.
A second US military vehicle was also destroyed by a roadside device just to the east of the Iraqi town of Falluja. The US army is yet to make a statement about casualties in the two incidents.
The sustained attacks all around Iraq come as an armed group captured two Americans and a Briton from the Mansur district in central Baghdad.
Captives named
As yet unconfirmed, Aljazeera has learnt that the US captives’ names are Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong while the British captive may be Betley.
Iraq’s Interior Ministry said all three work for GSCS, a United Arab Emirates-based firm that has won several building contracts in Iraq.
The latest abductions follow a spate of violence in which nearly 200 Iraqis have been killed in bomb blasts, clashes and other attacks countrywide over the past few days.