At least 10 killed in bomb attacks in Iraq
Baghdad, Dec. 17 (Xinhua-ANI)
At least ten people were killed and some 50 wounded in a series of bomb attacks in northern and central Iraq on Monday, the police told Xinhua.
Early in the morning, a car bomb went off in the village of Tahir-Awa, some 30 km east of Mosul, destroying several nearby houses of the Iraqi minority named al-Shabak, killing seven people and wounding 14 others, a local police source said on condition of anonymity.
Most of the victims were women and children, the source said.
The Iraqi Shabak people are an ethnic and Shiite minority group living in villages in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, particularly, around the provincial capital city of Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
In a separate incident, two roadside bombs detonated almost simultaneously in a nearby village without causing human casualty, the source added.
Elsewhere, gunmen attacked a police checkpoint and blew up a booby-trapped car in the city of Tikrit, the capital of Salahudin province in north of Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding four others, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua.
Separately, two roadside bombs ripped through a residential area in the city of Tuz-Khurato, some 200 north of Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding 20 others, a local police source said.
In Iraq's eastern province of Diyalam, a civilian was killed and seven people wounded in three bomb attacks across the province, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
Near Baghdad, three soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb attack near their patrol in the town of Tarmiyah, some 20 km north of the capital, while two policemen were wounded in a separate bomb explosion near their patrol in the town of Madain, some 30 km south east of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua.
The attacks came after a series of bomb attacks struck the city of Kirkuk on Sunday night, which killed at least 11 people and wounded some 50 others.
Violence and sporadic high-profile bomb attacks are still common in the Iraqi cities despite the dramatic decrease in violence since its peak in 2006 and 2007, when the country was engulfed in sectarian killings.