At least 17 killed, 32 injured in separate attacks in Iraq (Roundup)

Aug 29, 2009, 15:09 GMT

   Baghdad - At least 17 people were killed and 32 injured in two separate attacks in Iraq on Saturday, security sources said.

   Ten victims died in a suicide bombing in Shirqat, in northern Salah el-Din province. The attack also injured 14, the sources said. Four policemen were among the dead and four more among the injured.

A police station, several houses and vehicles were severely damaged as well as 10 shops when the bomber blew up his car near a market in the town, located 170 kilometres north of Baghdad.

   In Nineveh province, four people were killed and 17 wounded in a car bomb attack in Sinjar town, 100 kilometres west of the restive northern city of Mosul.

   Sinjar is home to the Yazidis, members of an ancient Kurdish sect who have been victims of a string of attacks in the past. In August 2007, around 400 people were killed in Sinjar by explosions targeting Yazidis.

   Two Iraqi soldiers were killed Saturday and a civilian was injured in a bomb blast that targeted a police patrol in eastern Mosul, a local police source said.

   The source added that a girl was killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on her in the Wehda district in Mosul.

   Some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, Mosul and its environs are the most ethnically and religiously diverse of Iraq's regions and have been the scene of numerous deadly attacks.

Late on Thursday, unidentified gunmen killed a member of al-Hadbaa political list as he left a mosque in northern Mosul.

A high-ranking officer of the Iraqi police escaped an assassination attack in Kirkuk on Saturday, a source from the Kirkuk Emergency Police Department said.

The source told Voices of Iraq news agency that a sticky bomb was attached to the vehicle of a major-general of the Baghdad police in southwestern Kirkuk, adding that no one was hurt.

Oil-rich Kirkuk, a city of mixed Turkmen, Kurdish and Arab population, lies 250 kilometres northeast of Baghdad.