At least 23 people, including 18 militants, an imam and several policemen were killed in a fresh wave of attacks Saturday that included the bombing of a Christian district, police sources and media reports said, accordign to dpa. A car bomb ripped through the Christian district of Hamdaniyah district of the northern Nineveh province, killing four dead and wounding 16, a police source told Voices of Iraq. Brigadier Mohammed al-Wagaa said "the dead were policemen while most of the injured were civilians." But he expected a rise in the primary death toll. Hamdaniyah is 20 kilometres north-east of Mosul. In a separate development, the Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's largest Sunni group, said Saturday that an imam and scholar were gunned down by unknown gunmen in the city of Mosul, 450 kilometres north of Baghdad. His attackers fled. Separately, 18 militants were killed in an exchange of fire during a joint US-Iraqi military raid in Muqdadiyah, 110 kilometres north-east of Baghdad, police sources said.
