Baghdad, April 21 (IANS) Thirty-three people were killed and 50 others wounded in attacks across Iraq Monday, police said.
The deadliest attack occurred in Iraq’s Wasit province when a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint and blew it up near Suwairah city, some 50 km southeast of Baghdad, leaving 10 dead and up to 17 others wounded, Xinhua quoted a police source as saying.
In another attack, a suicide bomber struck an army checkpoint with his explosives-packed car in al-Madain area, some 30 km southeast of Baghdad, killing two soldiers and wounding five others, an interior ministry source said.
In Anbar province, Iraqi security forces clashed with militants, said to be linked to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), in al-Jazira area of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad.
The gun battle left nine militants killed and seven others wounded, a source said without giving further details about the casualties among the Iraqi forces.
Two civilians were killed and five wounded in mortar barrage on several neighbourhoods in Fallujah city, some 50 km west of Baghdad, police said.
Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December last year.
In Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala, a member of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group was shot dead near his house in the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad.
In a separate incident, three farmers were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their tractor at a village near the city of Udheim, some 60 km north of Baquba.
The latest surge in violence came less than 10 days ahead of the landmark parliamentary elections on April 30, the first in the country since the withdrawal of US troops in 2011.