BAGHDAD, Aug 1: Bombings and shootings killed 61 people in Iraq on Tuesday, including 26 soldiers, undermining the government’s attempts to show it can suppress unremitting violence.

In Najaf, the governor said gunmen kidnapped 45 Shia pilgrims as they travelled home past the western city of Ramadi on Monday.

They were abducted along highway 160, one of Iraq’s most dangerous roads, said the governor.

A roadside bomb attack on a bus filled with Iraqi troops on a road between Tikrit and Baiji, north of Baghdad, killed 23, the army said.

In the north-western town of Tal Afar, a car bomb killed three more Iraqi soldiers and wounded four, police said.

A British soldier was killed in a mortar attack on an army base in Basra. In Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a car targeted soldiers, killing 10 people.—Reuters