Over 40 Shiites were abducted along a highway just north of Baghdad, police said Wednesday, and the death toll from a suicide bombing at a wedding party climbed to 23, including nine children.
At least 27 people were killed in new attacks in Iraq Wednesday, including one person killed in a car bomb attack in Baghdad's central market, which injured five others, police Lt. Ali Hassan said. The death toll in the market attack was likely to rise, he said, according to the AP.
The abductions took place Tuesday near the town of Tarmiyah.
Qassim al-Suwaidi, a doctor at Al-Sadr Hospital, said, meanwhile, that 12 victims of Tuesday's attack on a Shiite wedding in Baghdad had died from their injuries. Eleven were killed on the spot, he said. Another 19 were still being treated at the hospital.
An Iraqi translator with U.S. forces, Haidar Muhsin, was shot dead late Tuesday in front of his home in Diwaniyah, the second translator killed in the southern city in recent days.
In fresh attacks Wednesday, unknown gunmen riding in a private car shot dead police officer Izzaddin Abbas in central Baghdad as he rode his motorcycle home, police Lt. Bilal Ali Majeed said. A clerk with the Ministry of Industry was shot and killed in northeastern Baghdad as he was driving to work, police Lt. Thayer Mahmoud said.
A police officer was among three people shot dead in the northern city of Mosul, said Brig. Sa'eed Ahmed of the provincial Police Information Office. Mosul police also discovered the charred body of an apparent murder victim, Ahmed said.
The bodies of three people who were shot after being blindfolded and bound at the wrists were found dumped in the capital's eastern districts, Capt. Mohammed Abdul Ghani, of the city's Rashad Police Station said.
