Car bombs, gunmen kill 11 in Iraq; attackers bomb homes of policemen west of Baghdad

Car bombs, gunmen kill 11 in Iraq

BAGHDAD — Bombs and gunmen killed eleven people in a series of attacks in Iraq Monday, including a car bomb that exploded in a Baghdad shopping area.

The late morning blast in the capital’s western Mansour neighborhood killed three and wounded at least nine people and damaged several shops, security and hospital officials said. Ball bearings, apparently packed inside the car to increase the number of casualties, littered the bomb site.

Although violence has fallen sharply in recent years, Iraqi security forces still struggle to stop deadly attacks as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw. The violence threatens to further destabilize the country as political leaders jostle for control three months after indecisive parliamentary elections.

A bomb stuck to a minibus exploded in Baghdad’s overwhelmingly Shiite slum of Sadr City in the morning, killing one and wounding eight, police and hospital officials said.

Outside the capital, attackers shot and killed a father and two of his sons at home in the al-Zaidan village, near the town of Abu Ghraib, west of the Iraqi capital.

A police official said the dead man’s brother is a prominent member of anti-insurgent Sunni fighters known as Sons of Iraq, and that the gunmen likely believed he was staying in the house.

The area is at the doorstep of Iraq’s western Anbar province, which is dominated by Sunni Arabs and is the birthplace of the Sons of Iraq movement, also known as Sahwa, or the Awakening Councils. Members of the group once fought U.S. forces, but later switched sides to fight al-Qaida in Iraq.

Remnants of al-Qaida and its allies are blamed for many of the bombings and other attacks that continue to plague the country.

In another nearby village, al-Abid, gunmen forced the families of four policemen out of their houses at dawn and then bombed the buildings, police said. Officials said many in the area are Sahwa supporters, though others remain sympathetic to insurgents.

Attackers also blew up two empty houses in the town of al-Qaim on the Syrian border belonging to Samran Abid Mikhlif, a prominent local Sahwa leader. Insurgents then planted a bomb to ambush responding security forces that killed one police officer and seriously wounded four, authorities said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the were not authorized to speak to the media.

Elsewhere, gunmen dressed in military uniforms killed three brothers and wounded a fourth in Sunidij, a village between Baghdad and Hillah to the south, according to Maj. Muthana Khalid, the media spokesman of Babil police.

A local police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the brothers’ father is an outspoken critic of al-Qaida because other members of his tribe had been killed by insurgents.