Eight police killed in Iraq bombings
Iraqi insurgents have marked the third anniversary of the US-led invasion of the country with a wave of bombings that killed at least eight police officers.
The Iraqi authorities reported finding 15 more bullet-riddled bodies on Monday, one of them a 13-year-old girl, dumped in the capital and in the Tigris River south of Baghdad.
A large explosion rocked a coffee shop in northern Baghdad, killing at least three civilians and wounding 15, but the cause of the blast was not immediately known.
The official spokesman for insurgent group al-Jaish al-Islami in Iraq (Islamic Army of Iraq) Ibrahim al-Shammari has attacked the Iraqi government, describing it as a “sectarian gang”.
In an interview with Aljazeera, al-Shammari rejected government calls for dialogue with insurgents, although he agreed in principle to hold talks with US forces about their withdrawal from Iraq.
Al-Shammari also disclosed that talks had taken place with insurgent groups through mediators but said the Islamic Army did not take part.
Sectarian violence
One of the Monday’s roadside bombings took place close to an Interior Ministry detention centre in central Baghdad, killing at least three Iraqi police commandos and a prisoner. Four commandos were also injured in the midday attack.
A second roadside bomb in a farming area south of Baghdad killed four police officers, Iraqi police reported from the area.
The 15 dumped bodies are thought to be part of the sectarian violence being conducted by Shia and Sunni militias.
Since the 22 February bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra, more than 800 Iraqis have been killed in the violence.
Individuals attacked
A car bomb targeting a police checkpoint near a hospital exploded in central Baqouba, killing a police officer and injuring another as well as two civilians, police said.
Gunmen appeared to hunt down specific individuals as well, killing an Iraqi oil official on his way to work in the northern town of Mosul and opening fire on a former Baghdad mayor as he left his house, causing serious injuries, police said.
Assailants in a speeding car shot and badly injured a Baghdad district council member, and gunmen killed a grocery shop owner in the capital while he was at work, according to police.
In Mosul, one police officer was killed in three attacks on police patrols on Sunday. Four officers and two civilians were wounded.
An Iraqi police officer with a joint American-Iraqi patrol was killed in Baghdad during fighting with insurgents in the Amariyah district, police said.
Two others, including a policewoman dressed in civilian clothes on her way home, were seriously injured.