A woman walks yesterday past a bus that was destroyed in a car bombing the day before in the Shia slum neighbourhood of Sadr City in northeast Baghdad.
AFP/Baghdad
Attacks across Iraq killed eight people yesterday as authorities announced they have executed a dozen men convicted of “terrorism” in the face of the country’s worst bloodshed in five years.
The violence struck across Iraq, from the northern city of Mosul to the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, as well as in and around the capital.
But the deadliest attacks came near Baquba, which lies north of Baghdad and is one of Iraq’s most violent cities, with shootings in the city and nearby towns killing four people, including a Sunni anti-Al Qaeda militiaman.
Violence in Hilla, Baghdad, and the towns of Madain and Abu Ghraib near the capital left four others dead.
A series of co-ordinated bombings, apparently targeting a top police chief in Mosul, wounded 13 people, although the officer himself was unharmed, and another bombing in Tikrit wounded a city council chief.
Security officials, meanwhile, claimed to have killed seven militants near the town of Qaim along Iraq’s border with Syria.
Yesterday’s violence comes a day after nationwide unrest, including a spate of bombings in Baghdad against markets and cafes, killed 26 people.
Also on Sunday, Iraqi authorities executed a dozen “terrorism” convicts, defying widespread international condemnation of Baghdad’s use of the death penalty.
The latest executions bring to at least 144 the number of people put to death in Iraq this year, compared with 129 for all of 2012, according to an AFP tally based on reports from the justice ministry and officials.
“Yesterday (Sunday), we executed 12 convicts,” a senior justice ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“All of them were Iraqi men accused of terrorism.”
The official gave no further details about the men or the crimes they were convicted of.
