Fresh attacks leave 48 injured, four gunmen killed in Iraq (Roundup)

Jun 12, 2008, 18:54 GMT

Baghdad - Separate attacks across Iraq left three dead and 48 injured, many of them policemen and soldiers, while four gunmen, two of them Egyptians, were killed, police said Thursday.

Three people were killed and 15 wounded in a car bombing that targeted a police patrol in central Baghdad, a security source said.

'Among the casualties are 12 policemen injured and one police element dead,' a police source told Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

Nine members of a special police unit were injured by a bomb in the Palestine road area in east Baghdad while a bomb blast targeting the motorcade of a police general in Beirut square, also in east Baghdad, left six people injured, the VOI cited police sources as saying.

In west Baghdad's Embassy road, six army personnel were injured by gunmen while a bomb targeting a security official in east Baghdad injured five.

In the northern province of Nineveh, two tank drivers were wounded in an attack by unknown gunmen against four tanks carrying crude oil, a police source said.

Moreover, two separate bombs exploded leaving one woman and a policeman injured. Sources told VOI that both bombs were targeting police patrols in different districts in Nineveh's capital, Mosul, 405 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Earlier, Iraqi security forces and members of a tribal force known as the Awakening Council raided a hideout of suspected terrorists in Ishaki, near Tikrit, 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, police sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

In a shootout with the police, four gunmen were killed. Two of them had documents showing they are Egyptians.

In the south, three civilians were wounded on Thursday by a roadside bomb which went off near a convoy of the security care company in Wassit (180 kilometres southeast of Baghdad), a police source said.