Spate of Iraq attacks leave 18 dead

Baghdad: Attacks in Iraq killed 18 people on Tuesday, including six shot dead when gunmen stormed a house where a corpse was being ritually washed ahead of a funeral, officials said.

The violence in central and northern Iraq, including an area known as the "Triangle of Death", is the latest in a surge in unrest that has left more than 4,000 people dead so far this year. Authorities have sought to tackle the country`s worst bloodshed since 2008 with wide-ranging operations targeting militants as well as tight traffic measures in the capital, but attacks have continued to rock many cities. In today`s deadliest violence, gunmen stormed a house in the town of Yusufiyah and killed six people, including two women, as they were ritually cleansing the body of a Sunni Arab man ahead of his funeral, a police officer and a doctor at a nearby hospital said. Also among the victims was the dead man`s son. Two more people were killed and seven others wounded in the nearby Latifiyah town by a roadside bombing near a cafe. Yusufiyah and Latifiyah lie within the confessionally-mixed Triangle of Death, south of Baghdad, so called because of the brutal violence in the area at the peak of Iraq`s sectarian war in 2006-2007. Latifiyah in particular has seen a spike in bloodletting, including separate early-morning attacks by gunmen on two families. Elsewhere on Tuesday, three separate car bombs near Baquba, north of Baghdad and capital of restive Diyala province, left eight people dead and dozens wounded, security and medical officials said. Baquba, as well as the surrounding province, is mostly populated by Sunni Arabs, albeit with substantial Shiite Muslim and Kurdish minorities. The province remains one of Iraq`s least stable. And in the northern city of Mosul, two people, including a policeman, were gunned down by militants, while three bodies were found in northern Iraq as well. The spike in bloodletting this year has sparked concerns Iraq is slipping back towards the all-out sectarian war that engulfed it in 2006 and 2007. But the government has faced criticism for not doing more to defuse anger in the Sunni Arab community over alleged ill-treatment at the hands of the Shiite-led authorities. AFP