At least 11 dead in Iraq attacks

At least 11 people were killed in bomb and gun attacks in Iraq on Tuesday, including three by a device which blew up in a mock coffin during a demonstration, security officials said.

Baquba, July: At least 11 people were
killed in bomb and gun attacks in Iraq on Tuesday, including three
by a device which blew up in a mock coffin during a
demonstration, security officials said.

Dozens of people took part in the protest in
Khales, 65 kilometres north of Baghdad, to demand stiff
penalties for the perpetrators of anti-Shiite attacks in the
city, the local security operations command said.

The demonstrators were carrying a mock coffin when
a booby-trapped device exploded inside the box, killing three
people and wounding seven, an official at the centre said to a news agency.

Sectarian tensions remain high in Khales, a city
which in 2006-2007 was a battleground between Sunni insurgents
of al Qaeda and Shiite militias.

At the end of May, a car bombing in a Khales
marketplace killed 30 people, two months after another 42
people perished in a double bomb attack near a coffeeshop and
a restaurant.

In Yusifiyah, 25 kilometres south of Baghdad,
gunmen today killed a leader of the Sahwa militia, which has
sided with US forces against al Qaeda, and four family members
in their home, an interior ministry official said.

In the capital itself, two bombs exploded near a
petrol station in the central district of Muhandicin, killing
two and wounding five others, the capital`s police said.

And a man was killed in the western city of
Fallujah when a "sticky bomb" attached to his car blew up, a
local police official said.

Although overall levels of violence in Iraq have
fallen markedly since their peak in 2006 and 2007, deadly
attacks against civilians and security forces take place on a
daily basis.

Iraq has only a caretaker government more than four
months after a general election in which no clear winner
emerged.

PTI

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