Gunmen opened fire on municipal street sweepers in Baghdad on Monday, killing one and wounding two, while a senior intelligence official died in a drive-by shooting.
Unidentified gunmen killed Brigadier Fakhri Jamil of the Iraqi government intelligence service as he drove his private car in the Yarmuk area of western Baghdad, a defence official told AFP Monday.
Gunmen also killed Bassim Abdulhamid, an employee of the Sunni endowment, which manages the Sunni mosques, in a drive-by shooting as he left his house in Amara in mainly Shiite southern Iraq, a police officer said. Meanwhile, two workmen were shot dead and two more injured in another shooting in the city, said medics at the Al-Kindi hospital.
Also Monday, gunmen wearing military fatigues kidnapped 25 employees and customers from a mobile phone store in the main shopping area of the Iraqi capital, police said, according to the AP. The identity of the gunmen, who were wearing military uniforms, was not immediately known.
Police also discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of three men in the Baghdad area Monday. Two were found together with their hands and feet tied, while a third was fished out of the Tigris River, his body showing signs of torture.
Four roadside bombs and two car bombs Monday injured 11 people in various parts of the country.
One was a suicide car bombing targeting a joint American-Iraqi checkpoint on a bridge in the northern town of Rawah. Four Iraqi troops were seriously injured and three Iraqi army vehicles were destroyed, said an army lieutenant.
On his part, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for defeating sectarian forces in a speech delivered on Monday. "The power is in our hands ... and we will continue hitting terrorism and ... building Iraq brick by brick on the basis on equality and justice," he said.
