Thirty-five killed, scores wounded in Iraq violence (4th Roundup)

Dec 8, 2007, 21:05 GMT

Baghdad - At least 35 Iraqis were killed and scores wounded in separate bombings, raids and shootings in Iraq Saturday, local authorities said.

Bayji, 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, experienced the worst violence with two intense bombings. In one incident, 11 were killed, including seven policemen, and 44 wounded when the house of Ali al-Jaboury, the anti-terrorism police department chief, was attacked.

A suicide attacker detonated his explosives-laden car near the house causing the blast in the residential area. Among the wounded, eight are reported to be in critical condition, police told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

In the second incident, an explosives-laden vehicle was detonated near a police station on the Masafi street killing six people and wounding 15. Police sources said that all the injured were civilians. The intense blast damaged buildings.

Separately, US-led coalition forces said on Saturday they killed 12 militants and detained 13 suspects during operations to disrupt al-Qaeda networks in central and northern Iraq.

During an operation south of Yusufiyah, the forces targeted a suspected associate of an al-Qaeda leader involved in the network operating south of Bagdad.

The network is believed to be involved in planning an attack against Coalition forces operating in the region, according to the dispatch from the US military.

During his capture, the forces said they encountered resistance which called for aircraft engagement against 'the perceived hostile threat,' read the US dispatch.

Ten militants were killed in the air strikes. Ground forces later discovered 'numerous machine guns, rocket propelled grenades, and several sandbags full of homemade explosive material, which were safely destroyed on site.'

In other violence, a married couple and two children were killed in a near-dawn attack by Katyusha rockets on their residence in a district north- western Qut, 180 kilometres south-east of Baghdad.

According to Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency citing security sources, the head of the family had led Shiite cleric Moqtada al- Sadr's office in the district four months earlier but left to work as a teacher in a local primary school. Authorities have begun a probe into the attack.

In another development, a young Iraqi man was killed and another wounded when an explosive device went off in the centre of Ratba town 350 kilometres west of Baghdad, witnesses told VOI.

In a village near Kirkuk, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, local authorities said that gunmen disguised as Iraqi army soldiers shot dead an Iraqi merchant inside his house. It was not clear why.

The same sources told dpa that a joint US-Iraqi military raid in Olowiya village west of Kirkuk led to the arrest of two wanted militants and five suspects.

In other news, VOI quoted police sources as saying that a leader of the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, was arrested on Saturday by Iraqi military forces.

The militant Adel Olwan al-Keisy orchestrated attacks in the districts known as Azamiya and Fadl inside Baghdad. His arrest was reportedly made after local tip-offs.