Four police gunned down in Iraq market
6 December 2009, 16:32
Baghdad - Assailants gunned down four policemen deployed to guard shoppers and vendors at a vegetable market on Baghdad's outskirts, a local official said, as attacks in central and northern Iraq cost seven lives.
"The terrorists opened fire and killed four police at the vegetable market," at around 7:00 am (0400 GMT), said Shaker Fazaa, a local government official in Abu Ghraib, 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Baghdad.
The security situation around Abu Ghraib, home to the infamous but now renamed prison where US soldiers were pictured abusing Iraqi detainees five years ago, remains volatile with Al-Qaeda linked fighters still active.
On November 16, gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms launched execution-style attacks in the area, killing 13 members of a tribe who took up arms against Al-Qaeda, a villager and security official said.
In the northern oil hub of Kirkuk on Sunday, an Iraqi soldier was killed by an unknown gunman in the city's southeast, security officials said.
A private security guard, working outside the headquarters of the National Unity Gathering, headed by a Sunni politician but which includes Shiite members, was also killed in a drive-by shooting in northern Kirkuk.
In the town of Rashad, 65 kilometres south of Kirkuk, a member of a Sunni militia that turned against Al-Qaeda was killed when a bomb struck his car, said police Colonel Ahmed Mahmud.
Three others were wounded in the attack, including the local leader of the Sahwa (Awakening) militia of mostly Sunni former insurgents, Shujaa Taji al-Rayashi, the apparent target.
The Sahwa, known as the "Sons of Iraq" by the US army, joined American and Iraqi forces to wage war in 2006 and 2007 against Al-Qaeda and its supporters, leading to a dramatic fall in violence across the country.
Kirkuk has a mixed population of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, and long-standing Kurdish demands for the city to be incorporated in their autonomous region in the north have fanned ethnic tensions.
Violence across Iraq dropped dramatically last month, with the fewest deaths in attacks since the US-led invasion of 2003.
Official figures showed that a total of 122 people were killed in November - 88 civilians, 22 policemen and 12 soldiers.
Those figures were down markedly from October, when violence killed a total of 410 people across Iraq, a substantial number of them in twin suicide bombings near government offices in Baghdad that killed more than 150 people. - AFP
"The terrorists opened fire and killed four police at the vegetable market," at around 7:00 am (0400 GMT), said Shaker Fazaa, a local government official in Abu Ghraib, 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Baghdad.
The security situation around Abu Ghraib, home to the infamous but now renamed prison where US soldiers were pictured abusing Iraqi detainees five years ago, remains volatile with Al-Qaeda linked fighters still active.
On November 16, gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms launched execution-style attacks in the area, killing 13 members of a tribe who took up arms against Al-Qaeda, a villager and security official said.
In the northern oil hub of Kirkuk on Sunday, an Iraqi soldier was killed by an unknown gunman in the city's southeast, security officials said.
A private security guard, working outside the headquarters of the National Unity Gathering, headed by a Sunni politician but which includes Shiite members, was also killed in a drive-by shooting in northern Kirkuk.
In the town of Rashad, 65 kilometres south of Kirkuk, a member of a Sunni militia that turned against Al-Qaeda was killed when a bomb struck his car, said police Colonel Ahmed Mahmud.
Three others were wounded in the attack, including the local leader of the Sahwa (Awakening) militia of mostly Sunni former insurgents, Shujaa Taji al-Rayashi, the apparent target.
The Sahwa, known as the "Sons of Iraq" by the US army, joined American and Iraqi forces to wage war in 2006 and 2007 against Al-Qaeda and its supporters, leading to a dramatic fall in violence across the country.
Kirkuk has a mixed population of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, and long-standing Kurdish demands for the city to be incorporated in their autonomous region in the north have fanned ethnic tensions.
Violence across Iraq dropped dramatically last month, with the fewest deaths in attacks since the US-led invasion of 2003.
Official figures showed that a total of 122 people were killed in November - 88 civilians, 22 policemen and 12 soldiers.
Those figures were down markedly from October, when violence killed a total of 410 people across Iraq, a substantial number of them in twin suicide bombings near government offices in Baghdad that killed more than 150 people. - AFP
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