Seven family members shot dead in Iraq

By IANS,

Baghdad : Seven members of a family were shot in a town near Baghdad Wednesday, while six others were injured in two blasts in the Iraqi capital, Xinhua reported.

Before dawn, unidentified gunmen broke into a house of a leader of a government-backed Awakening Council group in the town of Tarmiyah, some 30 km north of Baghdad, and shot him dead with their silenced weapons, a police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The attackers also shot dead two women and four children of his family before they fled the scene, the source said.

The Awakening Council group, or Sahwa in Arabic, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-US Sunni insurgent groups which fought al-Qaida militants after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

In Baghdad, two roadside bombs went off outside a liquor store near the Nafaq al-Shurta area, in al-Jamia district in western the city, wounding five people, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

In a separate incident, gunmen using silenced pistols wounded a police officer while he was driving on al-Qanat Street in eastern Baghdad, the source said.

Wednesday's attacks came in the wake of three car bomb explosions in Shiite religious sites in Baghdad late Tuesday, which killed at least 19 people and injured 72.

Violence and sporadic high-profile bomb attacks are still common in the Iraqi cities despite the dramatic decrease since its peak in 2006 and 2007, when the country was engulfed in sectarian killings.