Scores of gunman ambushed a top aide to Iraq's Finance Ministry on Sunday in Baghdad, killing him and his driver, police said. The two were among 15 people killed or found dead in Iraq.
According to the AP, the attack killed Qutaiba Badir al-Din Mohammed, a Sunni adviser to Iraq's finance minister. Elsewhere, violence claimed the lives of 10 Iraqis in Diyala. Police said the victims included an Iraqi soldier, a policeman and an 8-year-old child, all killed separately.
The soldier was killed when gunmen attacked his patrol in Khalis, a town 50 miles north of the capital, police said. Three other soldiers were hurt in the attack, they said.
The child died after seven mortar rounds hit a residential area in the same town at sunrise, police said. A woman was also injured by the barrage. And the policeman was killed in a drive-by shooting in nearby Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police said.
Meanwhile, police said clashes broke out in Buhriz, a suburb of Diyala's provincial capital, Baqouba. Policemen backed by members of the 1920s Revolution Brigades, a Sunni group, battled gunmen and seized weapons and ammunition, they said. Four people died, including a 1920s member, police said.
Later, a civilian died by a roadside bomb north of Baqouba, and a severed head was found dumped at a farm nearby, police said. Another body was found floating in a drainage ditch in the Tahrir area, in a southern part of the city, they said.
Farther west, a parked car bomb went off in a commercial area in central Tikrit, killing three people including a 6-year-old boy, police said.
