Tehran, Setember 26: Two people have been killed and several others wounded in the latest violence in Iraq as the Iraqi police report success in detecting militants in the war-torn country.
Unidentified gunmen shot down a civilian on Saturday in front of his home in the western al-Amil neighborhood of Mosul, the capital of the northern province of Nineveh, Aswat al-Iraq news agency quoted provincial police sources as saying.
According to reports, the man used to drive army and police personnel from their units in Mosul to their residences in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
A traffic police officer was also killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) attached to his vehicle detonated in Baghdad’s central district of al-Karrada.
In a separate incident, four civilians were injured in a blast that targeted a federal police patrol in the area of al-Zanjili in western Mosul.
Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces said they discovered and defused five IEDs planted near a bridge east of al-Nassiriya, the capital of the southern province of Dhi Qar.
According to an informed security source, the operation followed intelligence tip-offs about explosive charges in place near al-Bu Adham bridge, located in the al-Fadliya district, 15 km southeast of Nasseriya.
Security forces also dismantled an 18-man terrorist cell that purportedly had links to al-Qaeda in Iraq, said a local official from Baghdad’s al-Sadiya district.
Iraqi forces arrested the group’s leader, Mahmoud Mohannad Rasheed, along with 17 others and more than 18 kg of explosives in Sadiya in the Khanaqin district.
The men were charged with involvement in attacks on several local Iraqi officials, including Adnan Ismail, a member of the municipal council in Sadiya.
Khanaqin is one of the areas disputed between the central Iraqi government in Baghdad and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and lies about 155 km northeast of Diyala’s provincial capital, Baqouba.
—Agencies