19 killed in Iraqi violence

BAGHDAD: Nineteen Iraqis, including a Shia cleric, died on Friday in the latest round of unchecked violence as security forces pressed on with an operation to root out insurgents in Baghdad, sources said.

Six people, including a child and two Iraqi soldiers, were killed in several attacks north of the capital early Friday, security forces said. In Samarra, insurgents took on a police rapid reaction force in a firefight that killed the child and one other person, while 10 Iraqis were killed and 12 wounded late on Thursday in an attack north of Baghdad, the US military said.

An Iraqi translator working for the US military was also gunned down near Balad on Friday, police said. In southern Iraq, gunmen killed Shia cleric Ali Abdel Hussein in Basra overnight, his son said. “Two men armed with pistols shot my father” near a mosque in a northern neighbourhood, Mohammed Ali Abdel Hussein said. “I chased them and they shot at me, too.” In Baghdad, Sawan Ali al-Qaissi, a Shia political leader from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq died of wounds sustained in a shooting earlier in the week. agencies

Home | National