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12 killed in Iraq's violence

05 August 2013 17:18 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Twelve people were killed and eight wounded in separate attacks in northern and central Iraq, police said on Monday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

In northern Iraq, a suicide car bomber struck an army base late on Sunday in eastern Mosul city, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing a soldier and wounding three others, a police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The huge blast also damaged nearby houses, killing a civilian and wounding five others, the source said.

In the morning, gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead a man and his son, and separately gunned down another man in Baghdad southeastern suburb of Jaarah, a Baghdad police source anonymously told Xinhua.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, gunmen in a car shot dead a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group member and his relative in the city of Maqdadiyah, about 40 northeast of the provincial capital city of Baquba, which is some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source said.

The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

In a separate incident, two civilians were killed when gunmen opened fire on their car in the town of Abu Saiyda, some 30 km east of Baquba, the source said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces killed three gunmen, believed to be Qaida militants, during a security operation in villages near the city of Sulaiman Beg, some 90 km east of Salahudin's provincial capital city of Tikrit, a provincial police source said.

The troops also seized a large cache of weapons and ammunition, along with three motorcycle bombs in the area, the source said.

Salahudin province is a Sunni dominated province. Its capital Tikrit, about 170 km north of Baghdad, is the hometown of former president Saddam Hussein.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is bringing the country back to a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.