BAGHDAD — At least 27 people were killed in bombings and ambushes Friday that largely targeted the houses of government officials, Iraqi security forces and those seen as allied with them.
Gunmen ambushed a checkpoint near the Anbar province town of Qaim, a former insurgent stronghold near the Syrian border, killing seven Iraqi soldiers, according to police, hospital and provincial officials.
Meanwhile, car bombs tore through two restive cities north of Baghdad. One blew up in the city of Tuz Khormato about 50 yards from the house of Niazi Mohammed, an ethnic Turkomen member of the Salahuddin provincial council. City police chief Col. Hussein Ali blamed al-Qaeda for the attack, which killed at least eight people and wounded 69.
Hours later in the Sunni district of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, a bomb exploded at the gate of a house, killing a man and two women who sold tea and water to soldiers at a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint, according to police and hospital officials. The Associated Press
