Asia

Home page

Asia

4 off-duty soldiers killed in Iraq’s violence

13 October 2012 18:18 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Four off-duty soldiers were shot dead by gunmen near Iraq’s northern city of Mosul on Saturday, while a lawmaker from the Sunni-backed parliamentary bloc escaped a bomb attack in central the country, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Four Iraqi army soldiers were shot dead when gunmen stopped their car in the town of al-Shora, south of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The soldiers were on leave in civilian clothes when the gunmen attacked their car, the source said.

In a separate incident, Ahmed al-Alwani, an outspoken lawmaker affiliated to the parliamentary bloc of Iraqia, escaped unharmed a roadside bomb explosion near his convoy in Abu Ghraib area, some 20 km west of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua.

One of the vehicles in Alwani’s convoy was damaged and two of his bodyguards were wounded by the blast, the source said.

Violence in Iraq has decreased from its climax in 2006 and 2007, when sectarian conflicts pushed the country to the brink of a civil war, but tensions and sporadic shootings and bombings are still common across the country.