8 killed in Iraq motorbike bombings

Three motorbikes rigged with explosives blew up in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra late on Wednesday, killing at least eight people and wounding at least 22, a doctor and police said. A doctor at Sadr Hospital in Basra said that at least eight people were killed and 22 wounded in the blasts, while a police lieutenant colonel gave the same toll. Basra province police chief General Faisal al-Abadi said that the explosives-laden motorbikes, which were parked in the city centre, had detonated about 8:00 pm (1700 GMT). He had earlier put the toll at two killed and at least 30 wounded. Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead a man who worked in the finance department in parliament, as he drove in the Mansur area of west Baghdad on Wednesday morning, an interior ministry official said. And a vegetable seller was killed and his daughter wounded by a magnetic sticky bomb on a vehicle in the ethnically divided northern oil hub of Kirkuk, police said. Violence has declined nationwide since its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common. A total of 258 people were killed in October, according to official figures.