Scores of Iraqis were killed and wounded in a series of explosions across conflict-torn Iraq on Thursday, while the US military said three soldiers were killed in separate strikes, according to dpa. At least 15 people were killed and 17 more wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a car rigged with explosives at a police recruiting centre near Baquba, independent Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported citing a police source. The attacker detonated the bomb near a crowd of police recruits outside the centre in the Hibhib district, 25 kilometres north of Baquba. The blast also damaged the building and set ablaze several cars nearby. Media reports had earlier said two car bombs had jolted Baquba, which is located 60 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Diyala province has been a scene of recurring acts of violence. Three US soldiers were killed and 12 others wounded in other attacks in the country, the US military in Iraq said. One US soldier was killed and two others injured Wednesday in an explosion near their vehicle while they were on patrol near the southern city of Basra. Another two US soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in an artillery attack Tuesday, the military said without disclosing the location of the incident. Also Thursday, at least two civilians were killed and 22 others wounded when a car bomb exploded in Talafar, VOI reported. The bomb was detonated near a youth centre in the city, chief of Talafar police Brigadier Ibrahim al-Juburi told the agency. Talafar lies near Iraq's border with Syria, about 70 kilometres west of Mosul. In Balad, 110 kilometres north of Baghdad, at least one child was killed and six more wounded when mortar shells jolted a residential area, VOI quoted a medical source as saying. The six children were admitted to Balad General Hospital and the body of a seventh child was received at the hospital morgue after mortars hit their houses in the al-Hussein neighbourhood in central Balad, the hospital director, Dr Qassim al-Qeissi, told the agency. Also Thursday, five brothers who had been kidnapped a day earlier were found dead, while their five-year-old brother was found alive near the bodies, in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, local residents told Voices of Iraq. "The bodies were found dumped near al Yourgon village on the main road linking Kirkuk to al-Rashad," an eye-witness said. Iraqi military forces meanwhile killed a gunman who had described himself as the "defence minister" of the militant Islamic State in Iraq group, according to state-run broadcaster al-Iraqiya. No further details were immediately available. The Islamic State in Iraq is an affiliate of the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In southern Baghdad, unidentified gunmen broke into a house in Sunni district of Wahda, killed a man in front of his family and abducted four of his sons, an Iraqi police source told VOI. The gunmen also set fire to a vehicle belonging to the family. The police have not yet found the motive for the attack. In other developments, joint Iraqi-US forces raided the village of Sari Tabh, north of Kirkuk and arrested 17 suspected gunmen, seizing weapons and ammunition, VOI reported, again citing a police source.
