At least 58 Iraqis, press photographer killed in Iraq blasts

Middle East News

At least 58 Iraqis, press photographer killed in Iraq blasts

Baghdad, May 29 (DPA) At least 58 Iraqis and one press photographer were killed in separate incidents in Baghdad, Baquba and Kirkuk Monday, witnesses and reports said.

At least 30 civilians were killed and an unspecified number injured when a bomb planted on a bus exploded in the district of Kazimiyah, Iraqi television reported.

A separate bomb blast in the central district of Karada, close to the al-Nafees hospital, killed three civilians and injured four, witnesses told DPA.

In a separate incident also in the same district, five Iraqi passers-by and a press photographer died after a US military vehicle hit an explosive device.

The blast destroyed the vehicle, injuring the soldiers inside.

The body of the press photographer was found close to the burnt-out vehicle.

No information on the photographer's identity or nationality was available, but he was understood to have worked for a news agency.

In another incident two car bombs exploded killing eight and wounding 17 others in Baghdad.

Witnesses said that two closely timed car bombs were detonated in the Iraqi capital. The first went off near the Imam al-Azam mosque in the northern Azamiya district of Baghdad, killing eight Iraqis.

The second car bomb blew up in Baghdad's Karada district as an Iraqi police patrol was driving by. The blast wounded several members of the police force and damaged a number of neighbouring buildings.

In an attack outside the capital, an explosive device planted inside a bus killed 11 Iraqi workers and wounded nine others in Baquba, Iraqi sources said.

Iraqi security and hospital sources said that an explosive device went off in a bus carrying Iraqi construction workers employed at the base of the Iranian opposition group Mujahidi Khalq in the town of Khales, near Baquba, about 60 km northeast of Baghdad.

The cause of the blast was not yet certain.

Meanwhile in Kirkuk three Iraqis, including one soldier, were killed while another seven, including two soldiers, were injured in two separate incidents.

Sources from the Kirkuk Police Department told DPA that unidentified gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying three Iraqi soldiers on a road in the south of the city.

The sources added that one soldier was killed while two others, including an officer, were injured in the attack.

Two British soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack late Sunday night in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the British Defence Ministry disclosed Monday.

Two more soldiers were slightly wounded in the attack, the ministry said, giving few other details.

It brought to 113 the number of British soldiers killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country three years ago. Britain currently has some 8,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq.

Latest News

Star stuff

At least 58 Iraqis, press photographer killed in Iraq blasts