Gunmen Attack Iraqi Security Personnel
Gunmen killed 11 Iraqi security personnel in an ambush Wednesday in Baghdad's deadly western suburbs, a police official said. Two engineers from Malawi and Madagascar went missing following an attack Wednesday on a mobile phone firm's convoy in western Baghdad, the company said.
Iraqna, a cell phone company owned by Egyptian-giant Orascom, said in a statement that their convoy was attacked at about 8 a.m. in the capital's Nafaq al-Shurta area and that the fate of the missing engineers was unknown.
There was confusion about the number of dead. Police Capt. Qassim Hussein said at least 10 security personnel were killed in the attack, and hospital officials put the death toll at nine. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the differences, and it was unclear if some of the dead were assailants.
An Iraqna engineer, Ali Jamil, told The Associated Press that the two engineers were abducted as they were heading to a project in Baghdad.
The steady regime of bloodshed continued across the country, including a suicide bomb attack targeting a police patrol near the southern Baghdad home of prominent Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Two policemen were killed and five wounded, according to Col. Salman Abdul-Karim.
Police found the bodies of 11 men shot dead and wearing civilian clothes with Iraqi army and police commando identity cards on a farm in Dujail, 50 miles north of Baghdad, said police Capt. Ali al Hashmawi.
In other developments:
Another five men, all wearing civilian clothes with fatal bullet wounds to their heads, were found floating in the Qaid river near Swera, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, said Kut Hospital morgue employee Hadi al-Itabi.
Three more Iraqi policemen and an Iraqi civilian were killed when a roadside bomb blast targeted another police patrol in Saadiya, a town about 80 miles north of the Iraqi capital, according to a spokeswoman who declined to identify herself further due to security concerns. Another four police were wounded.
The bodies of three men, including a prominent Sunni Arab leader related to Iraq's defense minister, were found with gunshot wounds to the head in a Baghdad apartment, said a police official who declined to be identified further because of security reasons.