At least 19 people were killed across Iraq on Wednesday as two school teachers were reported slain by militants who slit their throats in front of their pupils, the government said.
”Two groups of terrorists have cut the throats of two teachers in front of their students in the Amna and Shahid Hamdi primary schools in the Shaab district of Baghdad,” a government statement said.
The Shaab district of north-east Baghdad is largely populated by Iraqis from the Shi’ite majority.
The statement, released on Wednesday, did not specify when the murders were committed.
Elsewhere, five people were killed in a car bomb attack in the northern city of Baiji, a security official said. The car bomb targeted a passing United States military convoy and also wounded four people, police said.
In a separate incident in the restive city of Baquba, 60km north-east of Baghdad, three university professors were shot dead by gunmen close to the University of Diyala, a security source said.
Also in Baquba, a police officer was shot dead, while two civilians were wounded in a roadside bombing. Baquba has witnessed a surge in violence in the last few weeks with a series of bombings and shootings that has left dozens dead.
One person was killed in a roadside bombing near the party office of former premier Iyad Allawi in western Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.
”The bomb exploded on the road leading to Allawi’s party office,” the official said, adding that 10 people — including two police officers — were wounded.
Allawi, the pro-Western former Shi’ite premier, has made a bid to become the vice-president of Iraq. His Iraqi National list has 25 seats in the 275-member Parliament.
In another attack, three security guards at a power station in Baghdad’s notorious al-Dura neighbourhood were shot dead by gunmen, while three street sweepers were also killed in a separate shooting in the same area, the official said.
A former Iraqi army colonel was shot dead in front of his house by gunmen in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Saidiyah.
A car bomb killed two people and wounded two others on a busy market street in the capital’s centre, an interior ministry official said. Police also found five bullet-riddled bodies near a water purification plant in the Rustumiyah suburb just outside Baghdad.
Separately, the US military announced that a US soldier died after his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad on Tuesday.
The latest fatality brought the US military death toll in Iraq since the invasion to 2 374, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on Pentagon figures. — AFP
