BAGHDAD, April 23: Violence across Iraq killed 14 people on Sunday, including seven people in a rocket attack on the country’s defence ministry and three US soldiers in a roadside bombing.

Seven Iraqis were killed when guerillas fired two Katyusha rockets into Iraq’s defence ministry parking lot, the ministry said in a statement.

The explosions, which also wounded eight people, shook the sprawling Green Zone enclave.

The US military said three of its soldiers died when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb northwest of Baghdad.

The fatalities brought the US military death toll in Iraq to 2,392.

Two people, including a child, were killed in a roadside bombing in the town of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad. Seven children were also wounded in the incident, the US military said in a statement.

In an attack on a police convoy in northern Salaheddin province, one police official was killed and another wounded when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

Guerillas also fired two mortars at Iraq’s interior ministry and three mortars at Al Shaab stadium in Baghdad, but there were no casualties.

In Baghdad’s Al Dura district, one person died and another was injured when a mortar landed on their house, causing it to collapse and setting it ablaze.

Gunmen kidnapped the manager of a gas station in Baghdad’s Shia Kadhimiyah neighbourhood, the interior ministry official said.

He added that police commandos also found six bullet-riddled bodies of young civilian men in northern Baghdad’s Al Salekh neighbourhood. Also on Sunday, guerillas bombed the house of Ali Jassem al Saadi, the mayor of Al Mashruq.—AFP