BAGHDAD/ KARBALA, Jan 20: At least nine people were killed across Iraq on Saturday, including three died when a salvo of mortar rounds slammed into a Sunni district of Baghdad, security sources and a medic said.The three people died and 15 more were wounded when the mortar shells hit the Al-Sulekh area of the capital’s Adhamiyah district, a medic at the Al-Numan hospital said.

Also in Baghdad, gunmen killed a mobile telephone company employee and wounded two others in the southern Yarmuk district.

In another attack, Iraqi army Colonel Nazar Hamid was killed by a bomb in the main northern city of Mosul that also wounded two soldiers, local police said.

Mohammed Fawzi, an engineer for Mosul’s state-run provincial radio station, was also shot dead in an ambush on his way to work, they added.

South of Baghdad, gunmen burst into a house in the restive town of Madaen and killed two women and a man before escaping.

In the same area, joint raids by Iraqi and US troops in Iskandiriyah netted four suspected insurgents, Lieutenant Ali al-Shamari of the town’s police said.

Meanwhile, Iraq said on Saturday it is deploying 8,000 policemen and security guards in and around the shrine city of Karbala for Ashura, a frequent target of insurgent attacks.

Karbala governor Akil al-Khuzai said nearly three million pilgrims were expected to flock to the city for the ceremony, the holiest on the Shia calendar, which begins on Sunday and culminates on Jan 30.

“Attacks this year could be more severe,” Khuzai said, because of heightened sectarian tension in Iraq that pits Shia militias against Sunni extremists.

“Takfiris (extremists) seek to sow sedition and internal strife among Muslims via terror acts during Ashura.” Karbala police chief Major-General Mohammed Mohsin Abu al-Walid said security preparations were already under way, with new checkpoints to be erected in and around the southern city over the next few days.

The authorities have also drawn up a plan with neighbouring provinces to secure roads leading to Karbala, while a vehicle curfew will be imposed inside the town and a rapid action force will be on alert, he said.

Walid said the authorities have urged clerics and tribesmen to refrain from making inflammatory statements during Ashura, which is taking place against a backdrop of rampant Shia-Sunni attacks.

Every year large groups of Shia men with shaven heads march towards the mausoleum of Imam Hussein, flaying their heads with knives and swords as part of the mourning ceremonies.—AFP