Iraq attacks kill 33 people

Attacks in Iraq mainly targeting soldiers, police and anti-Qaeda militiamen killed at least 33 people on Thursday, among them 20 security force personnel, officials said. At least nine people were killed and at least 32 wounded in a car bombing in the Husseiniyah area of north Baghdad, medical officials said. In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, militants attacked the home of a Turkmen family, cutting the throats of a father, mother and two daughters, an AFP correspondent reported. Gunmen killed seven soldiers and wounded 11 others in three separate attacks south of the city, according to security and medical officials and Shalal Abed Ahmed, mayor of Tuz Khurmatu, where one of the attacks took place. Gunmen also shot dead four police in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, while three members of the Sahwa anti-Qaeda militia were killed by a bomb near Balad, also north of the capital, security and medical officials said. And gunmen attacked a checkpoint near a police station northeast of Samarra, killing one police and one Sahwa member, a police captain and a hospital source in Samarra said. An army officer said that gunmen attacked a checkpoint near Dujail, north of Baghdad, killing a soldier and kidnapping four others. And Colonel Obeid Ibrahim al-Kataa and two other police were killed in clashes with gunmen who tried to take control of a checkpoint in Al-Rutba, in the far west of Iraq, police officers said. The violence came a day after official figures put the number of people killed in attacks in July at 325, the highest monthly death toll since August 2010. While violence has decreased compared to its peak in 2006 and 2007, attacks remain common across Iraq. There were attacks on 27 of the 31 days in July.