Eight killed in Iraq attacks

BAGHDAD: A spate of bomb attacks appearing to target security forces in central and west Iraq on Wednesday killed at least eight people, including two policemen and two soldiers, officials said.

In the deadliest attack, a car bomb exploded near a restaurant frequented by security force members in the town of Medhatiyah, just east of the central city of Hilla, according to a police lieutenant who declined to be identified.

Four people were killed and 25 wounded in the 8:00 am attack, the officer said.

In Baghdad, insurgents opened fire on a police checkpoint in the Qahira neighbourhood, in the capital's north, killing two policemen and wounding another, an interior ministry official said.

And a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to a vehicle inside an Iraqi air force base in the town of Habbaniyah, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Baghdad, killed two people and wounded 10 others, according to officials in the provincial security command centre and at the morgue in Anbar's capital Ramadi.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011