Gunmen launched a series of coordinated attacks in and around Baquba city north of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 26 others, police and medical officials said.
Police Col. Mudhafar al-Jubbori said the assaults included a car bomb, three roadside bombs and small arms attacks on one checkpoint in the city and two checkpoints just south of Baquba in Muradiyah.
According to The AP, these attacks killed seven soldiers and five police, and wounded 26 others including one civilian caught in the crossfire, said Tariq Ibrahim, a medic at Baquba's main hospital.
In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police and injured a third in a drive-by shooting in the eastern slum of Sadr City, said Dr. Abdul Jabar Solan, director of a hospital where the casualties were brought.
According to The AP, two civilians were also killed when a roadside bomb targeting a joint U.S.-Iraqi military convoy went off in the southeastern New Baghdad suburb. The explosion missed the convoy, damaging two passing cars and wounding four people, including two girls, said 1st Lt. Ali Hussein Hamdani.
Elsewhere, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle outside the house of an Iraqi army officer in Balad, north of Baghdad, on Monday, killing at least 15 people, police said. They added several nearby houses had been damaged by the huge explosion.
Meanwhile, a Bulgarian soldier killed on Friday in Iraq was the victim of "friendly fire" from a US soldier, Defence Minister Nikolai Svinarov conveyed. "The information we have allows us to say with reasonable certainty that soldier Gardi Gardev was killed by friendly fire," the minister said Monday, according to AFP.
