BAGHDAD, May 10: Nineteen people were killed in violence in Iraq on Wednesday, including 12 in an ambush near a restive city north of Baghdad.

Gunmen ambushed a minibus carrying employees of a local electricity company near Baquba and ‘sprayed it with bullets’, a police official said.

“After the attack the police came to investigate, and at that time the bus exploded, wounding a policeman,” he added.

In a separate incident near Baquba, Kanan Abdallah, the town’s deputy police intelligence chief, and his two bodyguards were shot dead by gunmen.

In Baghdad’s southern Al Bayaa neighbourhood, defence ministry media official Mohammed Moshib was killed in an ambush, a source in his ministry said.

Over in the western neighbourhood of Yarmouk, unknown gunmen shot dead two traffic policemen, including a first lieutenant.

And a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol near the central neighbourhood of Karrada killed one soldier.

Thirteen corpses were also discovered by police around the capital — five in the southern neighbourhood of Al Dura, two in the western area of Amiriya and six scattered around the downtown region.—AFP