Bombers strike Iraqi army checkpoints
Two car bombings along with a string of other attacks in and around Baghdad have left 11 people dead.
A car bomber rammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint south of Baghdad on Thursday, killing five soldiers in Mahmoudiyah, about 30km south of the capital.
Several other soldiers were injured, according to army Lieutenant Odai al-Zeiadi.
A second Iraqi army checkpoint in the southern Baghdad suburb of Bueitha was also hit by a car bomber, killing one soldier, al-Zeiadi said, adding six other soldiers were injured.
Council members killed
Elsewhere, unidentified armed men assassinated three members of the Qadisiyah provincial council as they were heading to an internet cafe in the western neighbourhood of Khadhra, said police 1st Lieutenant Muhammad al-Hiyali.
In Baghdad’s Shia enclave of Sadr City, an employee of the Ministry of Trade was killed in a drive-by shooting, said police 1st Lieutenant Talib Naim said.
“Salman Lazim Shikara was heading to work when gunmen in a speeding car sprayed him with machine guns inside his car,” Naim said.
Explosives were thrown into the compound of a British security firm in western Yarmuk neighbourhood, killing one Iraqi guardsman and injuring two others, said police Major Falah al-Mihamadawi.
Witnesses said the attackers had driven up in a speeding car.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi patrol detonated at dawn in Latifiyah, killing three and injuring another three soldiers, said a Babil provincial police spokesman.