11 killed in Iraq attacks

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Shootings and bombings in Baghdad and north of the capital killed 11 people on Wednesday, including six government employees in a minibus on their way home, in the run-up to the Eid holiday. The other attacks mostly targeted government officials and security forces, amid a relative spike in violence in Iraq after several weeks of calm earlier this month. In Wednesday’s deadliest attack, six employees of a government-run vehicle spare parts factory were shot dead by gunmen using light weapons as the workers were returning to their homes, a police captain and an interior ministry official said. The attack occurred at around 4:00 pm in the town of Mishahada, which lies 30 km north of Baghdad, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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In west Baghdad, meanwhile, gunmen opened fire on an army checkpoint in the upscale residential neighbourhood of Mansur, and then detonated a bomb when police arrived at the scene, an interior ministry official said. At least one soldier was killed in the first attack, and three police were wounded in the subsequent bombing, the official and a medic said. Three separate attacks in north Iraq, meanwhile, left two dead - a policeman and a young child. In the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb apparently targeting the convoy of a provincial councillor killed a child and wounded two other people, a security official and a doctor at the local hospital said.