Over 30 die in day of carnage

2006-05-14 15:35

Baghdad - More than 30 Iraqis were killed in a day of bloodshed Sunday, including an attack near Baghdad airport.

Fourteen Iraqis were killed and six wounded in a pair of suicide car bombings at the checkpoint leading to the Baghdad International Airport.

A total of 33 Iraqis were killed around the country.

Two vehicles packed with explosives were detonated in a parking lot near the checkpoint, the US military said in a statement, adding that the attacks did not target the base itself.

The violence came as prime minister designate Nuri al-Maliki Maliki appeared set to break weeks of deadlock over the new government by leaving the controversial interior and defence portfolios vacant and instead keeping them in his own hands for the time being.

Aside from the attack on Baghdad airport, three other bombs killed 11 people around the city.

In the north between Kirkuk and Tikrit, a convoy of foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari's bodyguards was hit by a bomb killing three and wounding three, though the Kurdish politician was not travelling in the motorcade.

In the oil-refining town of Baiji, the scene of much recent unrest, gunmen shot dead a man in front of his home before fleeing, said police, who said the victim may have been working for US forces.

Clashes between insurgents and police as well as a suicide car bomb claimed the lives of a policemen and two civilians in the northern city of Mosul.

Outside the nearby city of Baquba, insurgents late on Saturday destroyed at least two small shrines of local Shi'ite holy figures, the Abdullah bin Ali shrine in the village of Wajhiya and the Tamim shrine, both in mixed Sunni-Shi'ite areas.

Gunmen just south of Baquba shot also dead a police captain and wounded his brother.

Meanwhile, two British soldiers were killed on Saturday and one other wounded after a roadside bomb exploded in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the ministry of defence said.

Their deaths bring to 111 the number of British troop fatalities in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion.

Over 100 Iraqis around the city of Samarra, in the restive central region of the country were arrested by US and Iraqi troops in sweeps that also netted bomb making materials and five suspected foreign fighters.

- AFP