Suspected Shiite militiamen killed at least 46 Sunnis in a weekend rampage of revenge killing in a city north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday, raising the toll in the latest sectarian bloodletting there to 63.
A string of bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk killed 10 people, including two girls who died when a man detonated explosives strapped to his body in front of the al-Mallimin girls high school in downtown Kirkuk, police officials said, according to the AP.
The U.S. military reported the deaths of a Marine and four soldiers. The Marine died in combat in Anbar province on Saturday. Three troops died in a roadside bombing Saturday south of Baghdad, and one soldier died in a roadside bombing Friday night southwest of the capital.
The sectarian killings Saturday and Sunday in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, were in apparent retaliation for the deaths of 17 Shiites, whose decapitated bodies were found in an orchard on the town's outskirts on Friday. An army officer in the nearby city of Tikrit confirmed the death toll and said 63 suspects - both Sunnis and Shiites - were arrested.
In the attacks in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, five people also died when a suicide bomber targeted a convoy of the Facilities Protection Service that guards government buildings and infrastructure. Ten others were injured in that attack, according to police Brig. Sarhat Abdul-Qadir.
Three other people were killed and eight injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a market in the southern section of the city, Abdul-Qadir said.
In Baghdad on Sunday, Interior Ministry undersecretary Hala Shakir Salim survived a roadside bomb attack that killed seven others, four bystanders and three bodyguards, police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani said. The Interior Ministry runs Iraqi police forces.
A husband, wife and two of their sons were killed, and two daughters-in-law critically wounded Sunday morning when gunmen stormed into their home in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Police Col. Eid al-Jibouri said the identities of the attackers and their motive were unknown.
South of Baghdad, three women and four men died in drive-by shootings in the village of Wahda on Saturday afternoon, according to provincial police spokesman Lt. Hadi Hassan.
Two policeman were killed in attacks by unidentified gunmen in the northern city of Mosul and in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, police spokesmen said.
A bomb also exploded Sunday morning in the old bazaar in the southern city of Basra, injuring three people, police Capt. Karim al-Zaidi said.
