Baghdad bombers strike

BAGHDAD – Two suicide bombers struck in a Sunni Arab district of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 14 people including the leader of a United States-backed neighbourhood security patrol, police said.

The strikes were the latest in an apparent stepped-up campaign of suicide bombings that has seen major attacks nearly every day for the past two weeks, even as overall levels of violence in Iraq have fallen. Three separate police and security sources confirmed the death toll and said about 20 people were wounded.Baghdad security spokesman Brigadier-General Qassim Moussawi told Iraqiya state television six people were killed and 26 wounded.One of the bombers detonated an explosive vest, the other struck with a car bomb.Among the dead was Riyadh al-Sammarrai, head of neighbourhood security volunteers in Adhamiya, a mainly Sunni Arab area in northeastern Baghdad.Other blasts in Baghdad killed five people, including a bomb hidden in a market cart that killed four in the central Karrada district and a pair of roadside bombs that killed a civilian and wounded two policemen in southern Jadiriya district.Police said they found five bodies of men handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head in volatile Diyala province, and gunmen killed a member of a neighbourhood patrol working as a carpenter inside his shop in Samarra.Nampa-ReutersThree separate police and security sources confirmed the death toll and said about 20 people were wounded.Baghdad security spokesman Brigadier-General Qassim Moussawi told Iraqiya state television six people were killed and 26 wounded.One of the bombers detonated an explosive vest, the other struck with a car bomb.Among the dead was Riyadh al-Sammarrai, head of neighbourhood security volunteers in Adhamiya, a mainly Sunni Arab area in northeastern Baghdad.Other blasts in Baghdad killed five people, including a bomb hidden in a market cart that killed four in the central Karrada district and a pair of roadside bombs that killed a civilian and wounded two policemen in southern Jadiriya district.Police said they found five bodies of men handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head in volatile Diyala province, and gunmen killed a member of a neighbourhood patrol working as a carpenter inside his shop in Samarra.Nampa-Reuters