Attacks kill 22 in Iraq

BAGHDAD: Attacks across Iraq targeting security forces and those marking a major Shiite commemoration killed 21 people on Wednesday while gunmen in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah assassinated the city’s mayor as he was supervising a clean-up project.
The deadliest among Wednesday’s attacks was the one targeting a group of Shiites marking Ashoura in the eastern city of Baqouba, a former Al-Qaeda stronghold, 60 km northeast of Baghdad. That attack killed eight people, including two children, and wounded 35, a police officer said.
Also on Wednesday, a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden car into a police checkpoint outside the northern city of Tikrit, killing five police officers and three civilians, another police officer said.
The bombing in Tikrit also wounded 18 people, the officer said.
Militants detonated bombs near police officers’ homes in the town of Karmah, west of the Iraqi capital, killing four people and wounding 24, police said.
And in the nearby city of Fallujah, gunmen on foot shot and killed the mayor, Adnan Hussein, as he was supervising cleaning teams in one of the neighborhoods, a police officer said. Two of his guards were wounded in the attack.
In Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib, a bomb targeting a police patrol killed one officer and wounded seven, police said.