22 killed in attacks in Iraq

Baghdad, April 27 (IANS) At least 22 people were killed and 35 others wounded in attacks across Iraq Saturday, police and medical sources said.

A civilian was killed and 10 others wounded in a roadside bomb attack at a popular restaurant in al-Naser district, east of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, Xinhua quoted a police source as saying.

In a separate incident, a roadside bomb struck a police patrol in Saidiyah district in the southern part of Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding five others, the source said.

Two civilians were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire in a market in a Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad's southwestern district of Amil. In another attack, a man was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his car was detonated in central Baghdad.

Also in Baghdad, police found the body of a civilian who was shot dead after being tortured in the Shiite district of Shula in the northwestern part of Baghdad.

In Anbar province, two people were killed and 20 others wounded in artillery shelling on several neighbourhoods in the besieged city of Fallujah, a medical source from the city hospital said.

Also in the province, gunmen blew up bombs at a polling centre in the city of Qaim, some 330 km northwest of Baghdad, destroying the building.

Elsewhere, two soldiers were killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol at a village north of the city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad. A civilian was killed when a roadside bomb was detonated near Tikrit.

In northern Iraq, an army force carried out an operation to hunt down Al Qaeda militants south of the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, leaving eight suspected militants dead and 16 others captured, police said.

Separately, a police force clashed with gunmen at a village some 30 km south of Mosul, killing two people.

Gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in Hamam al-Alil area, some 25 km south of Mosul, leaving a policeman dead. Another policeman was wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near his patrol in the eastern part of Mosul, the source added.

The attacks came a few days before Iraq's April 30 parliamentary elections, the first in the country since the withdrawal of US troops in 2011.