A gunbattle erupted as British troops came under fire in a vegetable market in southern Iraq on Sunday, leaving two people dead and a 7-year-old boy wounded, police said.
Gunmen started the fire around 7 a.m. in south Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, Police Capt. Hussein Karim said, according to the AP.
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In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi police car near a mosque, killing one officer and wounding three others. Drive-by gunmen nearby fired on a civilian car in a separate incident, killing the driver.
Police in west Baghdad said they found the body of a security guard who worked for the Health Ministry. The man appeared to have been shot in the head after being tortured.
A car bomb killed six people and wounded 42 in central Baghdad on Sunday, police said. The blast took place in the commercial Karrada district.
Meanwhile, al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sunnah on Saturday posted an Internet video showing the beheading of three alleged Shiite death squad members in revenge for killing Sunnis.
On his part, Iraq's national security adviser said he believed the number of coalition forces would go below 100,000 by year's end. Mouwafak al-Rubaie added the majority of coalition forces would leave before mid-2008.
"The more our Iraqi security forces, our police, our army, the more they grow in number, in training and are ready and able to perform and to protect our people, then the less we need of the multinational forces," al-Rubaie told CNN's "Late Edition."
"The overwhelming majority of the multinational forces will leave probably before ... the middle of 2008."
