At least 57 killed, scores wounded in 24 hours in Iraq (Roundup)

Aug 23, 2007, 14:34 GMT

Baghdad - Around 57 people were killed, including 10 gunmen, and scores wounded in a series of attacks that jolted the cities of conflict-torn Iraq in the preceding 24 hours, sources said on Thursday.

At least 25 Iraqis were killed and 20 injured in a double attack by militants near Baquba city on Thursday, Baquba police Chief Senior Officer Ali Dliyan told the independent Voices of Iraq news agency.

He said the predominately Sunni Sheikh Tamim and Ibrahim Yahia villages near Baquba were bombarded at dawn by mortar shells. The barrage was followed by an attack by what Dliyan claimed was about 100 militants from the al-Qaeda terrorist network, who destroyed a number of houses and bombed the al-Hussein Sunni mosque.

The militants also seized and executed the mosque's imam and three young worshippers and kidnapped five women, he said. Police engaged with the militants, killing 10 gunmen and arresting 22 others.

Dliyan has previously himself been the victim of militants, who killed his wife, a number of his children and some security guards at his house.

Thursday's attacks were preceded by a suicide attack in Muqdadiya, also in Diyala province, on Wednesday evening, in which 16 people were killed and 30 injured when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up in a crowded public market, the state-run al- Iraqiya TV reported.

Diyala province has been the scene of frequent recent attacks, despite a security operation launched two months ago by joint Iraqi- US forces to hunt al-Qaeda in the area.

Meanwhile the US military in Iraq on Thursday said four Iraqi soldiers were killed and 11 US soldiers were wounded in bomb attacks on a US military outpost in northern Iraq on Wednesday.

Eight Iraqis suspected of having information about the attack, have been detained, the statement added.

Separately, one US soldier was killed and three others injured during combat operations in an area west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Wednesday, the US military added, providing no further details.

In other developments, three mortar shells struck a house, a police station and the police headquarters in the Wasit province city of Kut, killing two people and injuring five others from the same family. A policeman was also wounded in the attack.

Wasit is located south-east of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.