TIKRIT: A suicide bomber killed five people in northern Iraq on Tuesday as bombs in the capital Baghdad killed three people, including an Iraqi general, security officials said.
The suicide attack in the refinery and power station town of Baiji targeted a police patrol and also wounded 18 people, police in the Salaheddin provincial capital of Tikrit told AFP.
In the capital, the general, whom police identified only by his first name Khodr, was blown up by a magnetic bomb in Aden Square in the Shia shrine district of Kadhimiya in the north of the city.
A second magnetic bomb killed one person and wounded two outside an army officers’ club in Al-Hurriya in northwest Baghdad, police said. There was no immediate word on whether the casualties were soldiers or civilians.
A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded four in a car in the mainly Sunni Arab southern district of Dora, police said.
In the heart of the capital, police thwarted a bomb attack on a convoy transporting cash to and from the central bank, detonating it in a controlled explosion after clearing the area, the interior ministry said.
The bomb was planted in a rubbish skip in the Rasheed Street area in the heart of the capital Baghdad and the explosion was heard across the city centre.
A bomb disposal team was called in after police spotted the device and it was blown up without any casualties, a ministry official said.
There have been a string of attacks by insurgents against economic targets in Iraq in recent weeks.
On June 13, five suicide bombers stormed the central bank and killed 18 people during a four-hour siege.
On June 20, two suicide bombers blew up their vehicles outside the Trade Bank of Iraq, the conduit for much of the government’s foreign exchange transactions and dealings with investors, killing 26 people and wounding 53.
West of Baghdad, troops killed a suicide bomber in Al-Anbar province foiling a multiple attack on Muslim worshippers gathering before dawn for prayers, the defence ministry said.
The Iraqi unit had lain in ambush for the bomber after receiving an intelligence tip-off about the planned attack on the Hay Al-Akrad mosque in the town of Al-Khaldiya, east of the provincial capital Ramadi, the ministry said.
"The force shot him and hit one of the releases (on) the explosive belt he was wearing which led (him to blow up)," an English-language statement said.
Troops then made safe two bombs which had been planted in the area as part of the planned attack, one in front of the mosque and one outside the home of an interior ministry employee, the statement added.
On the northern outskirts of the capital, saboteurs blew up a key oil pipeline in Rashidiyeh district, Baghdad operations command said.
The pipeline links an oil refinery and power station in Dora with Baiji, a key junction point on the supply network from Iraq’s northern oil fields around Kirkuk.
