22 people killed in Iraq's violence

Edited by Juan Leandro
2013-09-26 11:49:36

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BAGHDAD, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- Up to 22 people were killed and 51 wounded in separate shootings and bombings in across Iraq on Thursday, police said.

In one attack, 11 people were killed and 35 wounded when four roadside bombs exploded in a quick succession at a crowded marketplace in Sabie al-Bour suburb in northern the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blasts destroyed many nearby shops and stalls, and left several civilian cars burned, the source said.

Earlier in the day, the police said that seven people were killed and 15 wounded when a roadside bomb ripped through a popular market in Doura district in the southern part of Baghdad, damaging several nearby shops and stalls.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, an employee working in the provincial Diyala satellite channel was gunned down by armed men and another provincial government employee was wounded in a separate gunmen attack in the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua.

Furthermore, a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary fighter was killed when a roadside bomb detonated near his house at a residential area located some 10 km west of Baquba, the source said.

In northern Iraq, two fighters of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group were shot dead by gunmen who stormed their checkpoint in Shirqat area, some 280 km north of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua.

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.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq said earlier this month that almost 5,000 civilians were killed and 12,000 others injured in Iraq from January to August this year.



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