Baghdad: At least 25 people were killed and 31 wounded in separate attacks across Iraq Thursday, authorities said.
In Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala, eight Sunni civilians were killed and eight of their homes and a mosque set on fire when gunmen, believed to be Shia militiamen, attacked the village of Boudjah near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, Xinhua quoted a police source as saying.
Omer al-Hemiary, a leading figure in the Iraqi Islamic party, accused “an influential militia of being behind the sectarian killing”.
Hemiary called on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, also Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi armed forces, “to launch an offensive against the leaders of the death squads and the militias in Diyala, because the tensions are very high and the militias would spark serious sectarian strife”.
Also in Diyala, a civilian was killed and his wife wounded when gunmen opened fire on their car in Udheim area, while a policeman was killed by gunmen near his house in Himreen area, northeast of Baquba.
In Anbar province, six civilians were killed and 24 wounded in air strikes and artillery shelling on several neighbourhoods in the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, a medical source from the city hospital said.
Separately, fierce clashes between Iraqi troops and gunmen in the city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, killed six militants believed to be linked to Islamic States of Iraq and Levant (ISIL).
Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi last year.
Elsewhere, gunmen broke into the house of a police officer and beheaded him before they fled the scene in the town of Dowr, just north of Salahudin’s provincial capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, police said.
A policeman was killed and three others wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint in the town of al-Siniyah, some 50 km north of Tikrit.
Also in the province, a farmer was killed and three of his children were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near his car outside the city of Yathrib, some 90 km south of Tikrit.
Thursday’s violence came just 20 days ahead of the landmark parliamentary election scheduled for April 30, which is the first in the country since the withdrawal of US troops in late 2011.