A roadside bomb attack in east Baghdad killed an Iraqi army general on Wednesday while violence across the capital wounded 13 people, including a US soldier, security officials said. Brigadier General Taha Ahmed Samir, head of training for Iraq's nascent air force, was killed when a military convoy he was in was hit by the blast in Al-Kanat street, an interior ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Two other soldiers were wounded in the explosion. Elsewhere in Baghdad, a blast in the Karradat Mariam neighbourhood on the edge of the heavily-fortified Green Zone, left five people wounded, the official said. He added that another explosion in Baab al-Muadham, central Baghdad, injured four. A US military spokeswoman said an American soldier suffered "superficial wounds" from the blast.
And on Palestine street, in the capital's east, a policeman and a civilian were wounded by a bomb, said a police official who did not want to be named. Violence has dropped dramatically across Iraq since its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common, especially in Baghdad. A total of 197 Iraqis were killed as a result of violence nation-wide last month.
Some 50,000 US soldiers remain stationed in Iraq, charged primarily with training and equipping their local counterparts, though they do still take part in joint counter-terror missions. All American troops must withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year, however, based on the terms of a bilateral security pact.
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