By DPA
Baghdad : At least eight people were killed and 11 injured in separate attacks in Baghdad Tuesday while 43 people, including three foreign guards, were arrested in connection with the killing of an Iraqi woman.
In a spate of attacks in Baghdad, two people were killed and seven injured by a car bomb targeting a police patrol in Baya district, security sources said.
In another attack in Haifa street in central Baghdad, a geology government expert, Musa Faraj, was killed when gunmen attacked his car.
Another passenger was killed and a third seriously injured in the attack, according to the sources.
At least two civilians were killed in a random shooting in the western Baghdad district of Mansur.
In the eastern Baghdad district of Baladyat, three people were injured by a bomb while gunmen killed two in another attack in the northern area of Atifyah.
Baghdad has seen a surge in violence over the last two days following a week-long lull.
Also in Baghdad, at least three foreign guards working for a private security firm have been arrested by Iraqi authorities following a “random shooting” that killed an Iraqi woman, an Iraqi military spokesman said.
The nationality of the foreign guards was not clear.
The guards were among up to 43 people detained in connection with the shooting, according to some local reports, citing official sources.
Those rounded up include at least two US citizens, 21 Sri Lankan workers, 10 Iraqis, one Indian national and nine people from Nepal, according to Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.
Qassem Atta, military spokesman for the US-backed Fard al-Qanoon security plan in Baghdad, told dpa that the guards opened fire in the Karada neighbourhood Tuesday afternoon.
“Police forces arrested the owner of the vehicle who opened fire against the woman as well as Sri Lankan workers, who were accompanying him,” Director of the National Command Centre General Abdel-Karim Khalaf told VOI.
“The woman was wounded in the leg and was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment,” he added.
“We had given (police forces) instructions to deal quickly with all violations committed by foreign security contractors,” Atta told the press Tuesday morning.
“Unfortunately, some foreign security firms show no respect for the Iraqi law or Iraqis’ blood. We demand these companies to adhere to the law,” Atta added in statements cited by VOI.
In Diwaniyah, 180 kilometres south of Baghdad, US-Iraqi forces arrested 73 terror suspects in a large-scale offensive, launched Saturday, the daily al-Sabah quoted General Othman al-Ghanimi as saying.
The chief of the security committee in the province’s local council, Hussein al-Bidiri, told al-Sabah armed groups in Diwaniyah secured their funding through blackmailing local department chiefs, petrol stations, businessmen and building contractors.
Diwaniyah has been the scene of clashes between Shiite militias.
In the latest development, local authorities also said that a senior leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq organization was arrested early Tuesday.
Saadi Hussein Ibrahim, the self-appointed “Minister of Oil” of the organization was captured in Tikrit, 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, during a dawn raid on a neighbourhood in the city. Weaponry was confiscated from the scene of arrest.
The so-called Minister of Oil was responsible for oil-smuggling operations undergone by the group, notorious for being affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The oil is smuggled from oil fields in Bayji, 30 km north of Tikrit, and the money is usually used to finance the extremist group, a senior source from the Salahaddin police department said.