30 killed, 50 wounded in Iraq violence

Baghdad – As many as 30 people were killed and some 50 wounded in separate incidents of shootings and bomb attacks in Iraq Thursday, including a deadly minibus bombing, police and an official said.

The deadliest attack occurred before n! oon in Diyala province when a minibus loaded with over 100 kg of high explosives went off at a busy marketplace in Sa’ diyah city, some 120 km from Baghdad, killing 25 people and wounding 45, reported Xinhua citing a provincial police source.

Omer al-Hemiyari, governor of Diyala, confirmed the toll in a statement, adding that “what happened in the Sa’diyah is an atrocious crime and a security breach that led to the deaths of dozens of innocent people”.

The huge blast in the minibus set fire to eight civilian cars and ten shops and destroyed dozens of stalls, the police source said.

In a separate incident, a soldier was killed and his brother wounded when unidentified gunmen opened fire on their house in Sa’ diyah, a source said.

Meanwhile, two young men were killed and as many injured in a motorcycle bomb explosion in the northeastern part of Baquba, provincial capital city of Diyala, some 65 km from Baghdad, the source said, adding that two mo! re people were wounded in a bomb explosion near a house in the nearby t! own of Buhruz.

In Baghdad, gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead two brothers at their shop in a commercial street in the Shiite- dominated neighbourhood of Baiyaa in southern capital, a police source said.