At least 25 people were killed, including US and Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and 73 wounded in violence around Iraq on Wednesday, Iraqi officials and media reports said, according to dpa. In the latest escalation of violence in the northern Nineveh province, four policemen were killed Wednesday and four injured in an attack on their patrol by gunmen in central Mosul, security officials told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency. Also in Nineveh, a woman and her daughter were killed, while another four people were injured when an explosives-laden vehicle was detonated, VOI said. In Baghdad, the undersecretary of Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology and two people were wounded in a bomb attack on the official's motorcade. The bomb hit the motorcade of Samir al-Attar in the Ziyona district of eastern Baghdad, police sources told VOI. In August, al-Attar and his driver were kidnapped by gunmen in central Baghdad but were released a day later without a ransom. The official is a member of the secular Iraqi List of former prime minister Iyad Allawi. In another incident, seven people were killed and 20 injured in a suicide bombing in a shopping area in Muqdadiyah, north-east of Baghdad, police said. A suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt blew himself up in an area full of shops and street vendors, police told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa. In Samara, some 125 kilometres north of Baghdad, a leader of the al-Qaeda was killed late Tuesday. Sources told dpa the dead man was Algerian and his corpse was taken to the hospital. Elsewhere, eight Iraqi soldiers and police were killed and 42 people injured in Ubaydi, east of Baghdad, Tuesday evening when a lorry loaded with rockets exploded while they were trying to dismantle the rockets, VOI reported. The anti-explosive experts had already dismantled three rockets before the rest exploded, Iraqi security officials told VOI. Earlier, eight Katuysha rockets struck the US army base in Ubaydi and its base in Rustimiyah, south-east of Baghdad, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior said. Also in Baghdad, three US soldiers were killed when a bomb struck their vehicle on Tuesday night, according to a US military statement. Tuesday's attack brings the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq in February to 22 and the total number killed since the 2003 US-led war on Iraq to 3,966. The casualty figures among US military personnel has significantly decreased in the last three months, which is mostly due to large- scale offensives launched by Iraqi and US troops in Baghdad and restive areas in other provinces.
