Suicide Attacks Target Shiites
A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt Monday in a line of people waiting to receive government payments, killing at least eight other people and wounding about 30, including children, police and hospital officials said.
Eight more died in attacks elsewhere, including five members of a Shiite religious party gunned down in Baqouba and three policemen who died in separate incidents in Baghdad and Iskandariyah.
The suicide attack occurred in the mostly Shiite eastern district of New Baghdad at 9:40 a.m. as people lined up at a bank to receive government checks in compensation for food rations which were incomplete in the last few months.
Police Lt. Ali Abbas said the attacker joined the line and blew himself up while security guards were searching people before allowing them to enter the bank. The wounded included three children and nine women, he said.
Eight other people were killed and at least 30 wounded, said Lt. Ali Mittab and Raid Jabbar, a medic at the Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.
In other developments:
Elsewhere, gunmen killed three brothers and two of their sons in an attack on a street in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Diyala police's Joint Coordination Center said.
All five were identified by police as members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's leading Shiite political party, police said.
A roadside bomb attack in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, killed two policemen and wounded another, said Babil police's information office. Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi policeman protecting electricity generating facilities near a hospital in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City, police said.
Also Monday, Iraq's former electricity minister, Ayham al-Samarie, escaped injury when a roadside bomb exploded near his three-vehicle convoy in Baghdad, but two bodyguards were wounded, said police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq.
The bomb targeted the convoy of al-Samarie, a dual Iraqi-U.S. citizen, as it passed through Baghdad's western Mansour district, said Mohammed al-Jibouri, an official at the ex-minister's office. The motive for the attack was not immediately clear.
Al-Samarie, a Sunni Arab political figure, was a member of the transitional government established after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam's regime. Al-Samarie has said he maintains contacts with various Sunni Arab insurgents and has offered to mediate an end to the insurgency.
Another roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad's southwestern Baiyaa neighborhood targeting an Iraqi police patrol, wounding two policemen, police said.
The attacks occurred one day after Shiite lawmakers chose Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari for another term, a move that was received with mixed reactions from potential coalition partners. Kurdish politicians expressed some disappointment, and Sunnis complained that al-Jaafari was unable to rein in Shiite-led security services accused of abuses against Sunnis.
The U.S. hopes Iraqi authorities can form a national unity government comprising Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds and curb the incessant violence that has plagued the country since Saddam's 2003 ouster.