HILLA (Iraq), May 1: Attacks killed 32 people across Iraq on Tuesday, including 11 people shot dead in a minibus headed south from Baghdad to the mainly Shia provincial capital of Hilla.

“The bus was carrying people to Hilla from Baghdad and was attacked as it passed Iskandiriyah,” police Lieutenant Haider al-Lami said. “Three women and two children were among the dead, and three people were wounded.” Witnesses said six gunmen in two vehicles swooped down on the minibus and riddled it with bullets, the officer added.

While it was not known whether the victims were Sunni or Shia, the agricultural regions north and south of the capital have been a focus for sectarian violence.

In a similiar incident, gunmen in the nearby town of Latifiyah set up a fake checkpoint, stopped a minibus and shot its eight passengers, killing five.

Another four people were killed when a salvo of mortar rounds rained down on the town.

A roadside bomb targeting a passing Iraqi army patrol went off in the same area killing a civilian.

Just north of the capital, near the town of Khan Bani Saad in restive Diyala province, gunmen attacked a village and killed five people, police Lieutenant Ahmed Ali said.

Gunmen also kidnapped two engineers from the Asiatel mobile phone company, decapitated one and shot the other dead before leaving their bodies on the highway near the city of Khalis, northeast of Baghdad, company director Faruq Mustafa said.

In northern Iraq, insurgents in Kirkuk killed a blacksmith who refused to help them, police said.“They forced him to sit inside his car and then set it on fire after he refused to manufacture the implements they use in their attacks,” said Captain Abdullah Mohammed.

Insurgents also killed three other people elsewhere in the city, one of them a policeman, he added.-—AFP