KARBALA, Dec 9: A suicide car bomb killed at least six people and wounded dozens more close to the shrine of Hazrat Abbas here on Saturday, officials said. Elsewhere, sectarian and insurgent attacks claimed 10 more lives.
Salim Kadhim, spokesman for Karbala's health department, said that six men had been killed and 47 people wounded -- including two women and a child -- in the car bombing.
The bomber was also killed, he said, citing witnesses who said that a traffic policeman had asked a motorist who parked in a crowded shopping street to move on and was ripped apart when the car detonated.
The blast erupted in al-Abbas street, a few hundred metres from Hazrat Abbas’ mausoleum. Several other cars and a row of shops caught fire.
Police said four people were killed, including a 10-year-old girl, in separate and indiscriminate attacks by insurgent gunmen on crowds of civilians in Baquba, north of Baghdad.
In Mosul a car bomb in the central Yarmuk neighbourhood killed three people and wounded another three, police Col Abdul Karim al-Juburi said.
In Baghdad, primary school headmaster Yussif Faraj al-Shimari was shot dead in the restive southern neighbourhood of Dura, while two more people died in mortar attacks on the mixed district of Adhamiyah, police said.
Police also reported finding 39 bodies scattered around Baghdad throughout the day.
Insurgents killed two US marines in Iraq's western al-Anbar province, the military reported on Saturday.
SADR’S AIDE DETAINED: US and Iraqi forces arrested Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s representative in the central city of Kut and seven of his guards on Saturday, security officials and a Sadr spokesman said.
Sheikh Yahya Ahmed al-Khafaji, the head of Sadr’s movement in Kut, 175 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, was seized in an early morning swoop on his office, an Iraqi security source said on condition of anonymity.
A Sadr spokesman in Baghdad confirmed the raid.
“We have information that the US and Iraqi forces arrested the chief of our office in Kut and his seven guards early today. They also took away office equipment such as computers and other papers,” said Sheikh Saleh Hassan.
A US news release said that one militia fighter was injured in an exchange of fire with Iraqi troops, but that no one was killed during the operation.—AFP
