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29 killed in Iraq violence

BAGHDAD: Tens of thousands of Shia protestors poured into central Baghdad on Saturday to demand that US troops leave Iraq as 29 people were killed in attacks on the second anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s downfall.

On Saturday, violence against Iraqi security forces and civilians killed 29 and wounded scores more in separate incidents.

In the most deadly attack, an improvised explosive device (IED) killed 15 Iraqi soldiers and wounded several others on Saturday morning on the main highway through Latifiyah, 40 kilometres south of Baghdad, a Defence Ministry official said. On the same road just outside Latifiyah, attackers gunned down five civilians, a medical source said. The region populated by a mix of Sunnis and Shias, is called the “triangle of death” for its high rate of murders and kidnappings.

Also south of Baghdad, four drivers were killed and four others wounded in an ambush on a 14-truck Trade Ministry convoy travelling between Kut and the capital, an Interior Ministry source said. The route from Kut, 175 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, has become a regular target for insurgents.

In Baghdad, Sayed Fadel al-Shoq, a deputy to Sadr was killed, and another deputy was injured in the southern Dura district as they drove to an anti-US protest, a Sadr official said.

In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide car bomber in an Opel killed a police officer and a civilian and wounded 14 others, including 11 policemen, medical sources and police said. And an Iraqi soldier and a civilian were killed in a roadside bomb in Mashahda, 30 kilometres north of Baghdad, an army captain said. afp

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