45 killed in fresh violence in Iraq

A total of 45 people were killed and 54 others wounded in violent attacks across Iraq on Saturday, including shelling and clashes in the volatile province of Anbar, security and medical sources said. During the day, the main hospital in the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, received five bodies and seven wounded people by the artillery and mortar shelling on the city neighborhoods, which are still under full control of anti- government tribal fighters, a source from the city hospital told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Earlier in the day, the source said his hospital received eight bodies and 16 wounded people by the sporadic shelling on the city since late Friday night and Saturday morning. Meanwhile, a civilian was killed and six others were wounded in an artillery and mortar shelling on several neighborhoods in southern and northern of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua. The shelling also destroyed and damaged several houses in the city, the source said. Also in the province, Iraqi Operations Command of Anbar said in a statement that the soldiers fought al-Qaida militants in the districts of Albu-Farraj, near the highway in northern Ramadi, killing 20 militants and destroying one of their vehicles. The ongoing violence in the Anbar province came as the UN refugee agency on Friday said more than 65,000 people had fled the conflict in the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar over the past week. Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late last December. The Sunnis have been carrying out a year-long protest, accusing the Shiite-led government of marginalizing them and its Shiite- dominated security forces of indiscriminately arresting, torturing and killing their sons. In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, seven family members were killed at dawn when several mortar rounds landed on a Shiite village near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua. Women and children were among the dead by the blasts that destroyed their house in the village, the source said. In a separate incident, a soldier was killed and two others wounded when a booby-trapped house belonging to a wanted al-Qaida militant detonated when the soldiers entered inside during a raid on the suspected hideout at a village near the city of Saadiyah, some 60 km northeast of Baquba, the source said. Also in Diyala, a local al-Qaida cell leader and his aide were killed when Iraqi security forces raided their safe house at a village located some 25 km northeast of Baquba, the source added. In Baghdad, a car bomb went off in the morning in Amriyah district, west of the capital, killing a civilian and wounding 10 others, a police source told Xinhua. In addition, nine people were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in Saydiyah district in southern Baghdad, while four soldiers were wounded in another roadside bomb blast near their patrol in Jamia district in western the capital, the source said. Iraq is witnessing its worst violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, which is the highest annual death toll for years.