A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol in Baghdad killed two civilians Sunday, as attacks claimed the lives of at least five people despite a marked decrease in violence across the country in recent months, AP reported. The roadside bomb in southeastern Baghdad's neighborhood of Zaafaraniyah also wounded four people, a Baghdad police officer said. Earlier, a local government official in the town of Kut, south of the capital, escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a bomb exploded outside his house. Abdul-Ridha al-Badri, director of the human rights ministry's provincial branch in Kut, his wife and four sons were injured by shattered glass and falling pieces of the house's facade, a police officer said. To the north, gunmen shot and killed an Iraqi Army officer west of the city of Mosul, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, police said. Also in Mosul Sunday, a parked car bomb targeting a passing police patrol killed a civilian and wounded five policemen, police said. In the Tikrit, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, one policeman was injured when a roadside bomb exploded as police were attempting to defuse it, police said.
