Seven people were killed in attacks in central Iraq Wednesday, as the British army apologized for a raid in the southern port of Basra on the home of a new Iraqi MP.
In Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, a school guard died in a car blast and a school teacher was injured, an interior ministry official said, according to AFP. The car bomb struck near a U.S. convoy.
North of Baghdad, two men died when a bomb they had prepared went off prematurely near a water pumping station in Khalis, about 80 kilometres northeast of the capital, an army colonel said.
The two men were suspects in a bombing of a Muslim shrine in Khalis Monday that killed one Shiite traveler on his way to the pilgrimage city of Karbala.
In Balad, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad, an armed man was killed and an Iraqi soldier was injured during an hour-long shoot-out, while in nearby Dujail, unknown gunmen kidnapped a truck driver and killed his passenger, security officials said.
Close to Baiji, 200 kilometres north of the capital, two brothers who worked for the Iraqi army were found dead by soldiers, said an army captain. A note was found with the corpses claiming the killings in the name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers group.
Also Wednesday, gunmen attacked one of the leading Kurdish party buildings, injuring two guards in Mosul. An attacker was killed by return fire, said Abdul Al-Ghani Botani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Meanwhile, the British army apologized for barging into the home of an Iraqi MP in Basra and arresting his relatives. "It has subsequently become clear that the information that we acted on was wrong. We unreservedly accept that the individuals detained are innocent and they have now all been released," the British military said in a statement.
