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8 Iraqi Family Members Killed by ’Terrorist Group’; 13 Others Killed Separately

02 March 2010 02:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Eight family members were killed, some of them beheaded, by a "terrorist group" on Monday morning in their home on Baghdad’s outskirts, Iraqi security forces said in a statement, APA reports quoting Al Jazeera.

"A terrorist group carried out at 7:00 am (0400 GMT) a brutal crime against a family in Al-Wehdah neighborhood," the Baghdad Operations Command said in a statement.

"This gang killed eight members of this family using silencer pistols."
It added: "The criminals have beheaded some of them." Beheadings have been the trademark of particularly Al-Qaeda in the violence that flared after the 2003 US-led invasion.
It was not immediately clear why the family was killed. Al-Wehdah is about 20 kilometers southeast of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, a suicide car bomb struck an interior ministry detention centre, killing a man, his six-year-old son and a policeman, said a police officer and a doctor at the city’s hospital. The attack left four other people wounded, including two policemen.

The violence comes ahead of parliamentary elections on March 7, the second legislative polls since Saddam Hussein was ousted after the invasion.

In the centre of Baghdad, a police commando was shot dead by a sniper in Saadun street on Monday while he was checking a car for explosives, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

In the northern city of Mosul, meanwhile, two Iraqi soldiers were killed when their checkpoint came under fire from unidentified gunmen on Monday morning, police Captain Muwafaq Khadhim said.

In a separate incident two policemen were shot dead at around midday while manning a checkpoint near a popular market in central Mosul, Lieutenant Marwan Abdul Karim said.

Monday afternoon, two people were also killed in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, security officials said.
Police Lieutenant Kamaran Ali Hassan was gunned down in front of his home in the east of the city as he was getting out of his car. Mohammed Khalaf Ahmed, a businessman, was shot dead by gunmen on a road south of the city.

And in Baghdad, higher education ministry official and university professor Thamer Kamil was gunned down while he was in the east Baghdad Al-Canal area, a policeman said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Five civilians were earlier wounded when several mortars hit Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which is home to several foreign embassies and government departments, an interior ministry official said.