BAGHDAD — A series of bombings and shootings around Iraq on Tuesday claimed 13 lives, including four policemen, an Iraqi army general and a 9-year-old girl, Iraqi officials said.
While violence has dropped overall across the country, the attacks underline the continued threat to government employees and members of the security forces, who are often targeted by insurgents trying to destabilize the country.
The four policemen were killed when an explosives-laden car detonated next to a police patrol in the town of Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, Iraqi police officials said. A civilian in a nearby vehicle was also killed, and at least seven civilians were wounded.
A brigadier general with the Iraqi army was killed when a bomb attached to his car exploded in Kazimiyah, a primarily Shiite district in northern Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.
In Diyala province, gunmen shot dead four members of a Sunni family, including a 9-year girl, as the family was walking near their house in the town of Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, local police officials said.
An official with the Baghdad provincial council, Qahtan Abdul-Hussein, died when a bomb attached to his vehicle went off Tuesday morning as he was driving through a security checkpoint in the mainly Shiite district of Hurriyah in northern Baghdad, the Baghdad provincial council said. A policeman at the checkpoint was injured.
In a separate attack in Beiji, police said gunmen opened fire on an oil truck traveling on a highway just outside the city, killing its driver. Oil-related infrastructure such as pipelines or refineries have often been targeted by insurgents looking to disrupt the flow of oil and hurt Iraq’s oil income.
In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen broke into a house, killing one woman and wounding two others, police and hospital officials said.
Also on Tuesday, officials in southern city of Basra said the bullet-riddled body of Sabri al-Asadi, a municipal official who had been missing for two days, was found.
