By DPA
Baghdad : A fresh wave of violence has struck two northern Iraqi provinces, killing at least 15, reports said Wednesday.
In a village near Qadaa Sinjar in the Nineveh province, around 250 km north-west of Baghdad, 10 civilians were reported killed and nine wounded in a car bomb explosion. According to independent Voices of Iraq news agency, citing hospital sources, the condition of four of the wounded was critical.
Qadaa Sinjar is inhabited by a large population of Yazidis, members of a religious sect who do not follow the tenets of Islam and who are concentrated in the northern Iraqi villages around Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province.
Yazidi villages had earlier been attacked in a series of simultaneous explosions in August when more than 500 people were killed.
In a separate act of violence, five Iraqis belonging to the same family were killed overnight in Diyala province, 57 km north of Baghdad, hours after they were reported kidnapped.
An official from the province told Voices of Iraq that an armed group belonging to an extremist network was responsible for the killings. According to the official, the group set up a fake checkpoint from which it ambushed the family, who were travelling along the main road of Qadaa Baladrose, south-east of Diyala’s capital Baquba.
The family’s bodies were discovered penetrated by bullets, blind-folded and with their hands tied together. The police source did not disclose the name of the suspected armed group.
In another development, Iraq’s special forces launched an offensive directed by the ministry of defence at the military academy in Baghdad, a US statement said Wednesday.
“Iraqi Special Operations Forces conducted an operation directed by the ministry of defence Sep 25 (Tuesday) at the Iraqi Military Academy-Rustamiyah in Baghdad,” the statement said.
The Rustamiyah military academy, which has been a key army officers’ college since the times of the former regime, has been partially used as a military base by US troops since the invasion in 2003.
The offensive was aimed at arresting suspects in connection with the kidnapping and murder of an army officer and the abduction of another who was later released, the statement said.
The statement quoted the spokesman for Iraq’s ministry of defence, Muhammad al-Askari, as saying, “Iraqi security forces are focused on eliminating criminals from their ranks.”
An officer from the academy told the Voices of Iraq that a joint Iraqi-US force had conducted an airdrop and a six-hour long operation at the military academy in south-eastern Baghdad and arrested scores of officers and seized weapons.
The forces later released most of them but held five in custody, including the head of the academy, Gen. Muid Bidai, said the officer.
Meanhwile, the Paris-based freedom of press advocate Reporters Without Borders published a report saying that two Iraqi journalists were murdered during the past week.
Television journalist Jawad al-Daami, of the satellite TV station al-Baghdadiya, was shot dead in Baghdad on Sep 23 in the western suburb of al-Qadissiya, three days after the killing of Mohannad Ghanem Ahmed of radio Dar al-Salam in the northern city of Mosul.
Ghanem Ahmed was gunned down near a mosque in the Muharibin suburb of eastern Mosul and his attackers escaped. He was the sixth journalist to be killed only in Mosul this year.
“The plight of the Iraqi media continues to be disastrous,” the organization said. “Fifty-five journalists and media assistants have been killed so far this year.”
The organization deemed Baghdad the “most deadly city for journalists,” with 35 reporters having been killed in the capital this year.
According to recent statistics published by Reporters Without Borders, since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, 203 media workers have been killed and 83 kidnapped, 14 of whom reportedly still being held by their captors.