A string of attacks across Iraq left at least 25 dead and scores wounded. A roadside bomb planted near a police station killed eight people and injured 14 in a market in southeastern Baghdad on Thursday, police said. The bomb hit the Zafaraniyah neighborhood. Two women were among the victims. One child also died in the explosion.
In another attack in Baghdad, at least five people were killed and eight wounded when a car bomb went off in Baghdad's Shiite-dominated Sadr City, a security official said. Earlier, gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint manned by Iraqi police and army in northern Iraq late Wednesday, killing four soldiers and seven police officers, the U.S. military and Iraqi officials said Thursday.
A police commando died and two injured in the western Jihad district of the Iraqi capital when a roadside bomb went off next to their patrol, AFP reported.
Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces have captured a suspect in the 2004 kidnapping and beheading of a Japanese citizen, Iraqi officials said Thursday. According to the AP, the Interior Ministry identified the suspect as Hussein Fahmi, a 28-year-old al-Qaeda in Iraq activist arrested over two months ago in western Baghdad.
Fahmi confessed to carrying out 116 beheadings, including that of 24-year-old Japanese Shosei Koda, ministry official Maj. Raid al-Mafraji said. Fahmi is of Egyptian and Palestinian descent.
