12 killed in Iraq violence

Baghdad  :  Twelve people were killed and 23 wounded Thursday in separate shootings and bombings in Iraq, including a suicide car bombing, police said.

In one attack, four people were killed and 10 wounded when a booby-trapped car went off in Mashtal district in eastern the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a police source told Xinhua.

In a separate incident, a roadside bomb ripped through the town of Madain, some 30 km southeast of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding six others, the source said.

Elsewhere, two women were killed and two men wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their car in the town of Yathrib, some 80 km north of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua.

In northern Iraq, a policeman was shot dead by gunmen when he entered a restaurant in the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, a local police source said.

In Iraq’s western province of Anbar, three people were killed and five wounded before noon when a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint at the entrance of an Iraqi army base in the central part of the city of Aana, some 260 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua.

An army officer was among the dead, the source said, adding that the troops captured a suspect who was filming the attack.

Insurgent attacks continue in the volatile Sunni Arab area west of Baghdad that stretches through Anbar province to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, almost 7, 000 Iraqis were killed and over 16,000 others injured from January to October this year.