Iraq: 18 Killed in Series of Attacks; Province Takes on Militants

The deadliest attack was in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Shula, killing three policemen and three civilians.

Militants unleashed a series of attacks on Wednesday in and around Baghdad, killing at least 18 people, officials said.

South of the Iraqi capital, a provincial council approved a decision allowing authorities to demolish homes of convicted militants and banish their families from the province.

A Series of Attacks

• The deadliest attack killed three policemen and three civilians when a suicide bomber on foot blew up his explosives-laden vest at a police checkpoint in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Shula, a police officer said.
  
  
• In the town of Youssifiyah, a bomb explosion in a commercial area killed at least three shoppers and wounded nine others.
  
  
• Elsewhere three intelligence officers affiliated to the Interior Ministry were gunned down by drive-by shooters armed with pistols in the northeastern suburb of Rashidiya.
  
  
• Another bomb explosion in a commercial area in the capital’s southwestern Saydiya neighborhood killed two civilians and wounded five others.
  
• Also, a mortar attack on a camp for displaced civilians south of Baghdad killed four and wounded eight, according to Iraqi officials.
  
  

The United Nations issued a statement on the attack, the third such attack on the camp in the past three months, calling it “cowardly.”

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, most of which bore the hallmarks of ISIS.