23 killed, 44 injured in Iraq violence

A wave of bombing and shooting incidents in Iraq left at least 23 people, including two journalists, dead, and 44 wounded Saturday, police said.

Eleven people were killed and 35 others wounded when a car bomb exploded near a popular cafe in the town of Balad, some 80 km from Baghdad, reported Xinhua citing a police source.

In Mosul city, unidentified gunmen shot dead Mohammed Karim al-Badrani, a correspondent for al-Sharqiyah satellite channel, and his colleague Mohammed Ghanim, while interviewing local citizens in Sarj-Khana district in central Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, a police source said.

The Iraqi Journalists Syndicate condemned the killing of two journalists.

Separately, a roadside bomb went off at a checkpoint manned by government-backed Sahawa paramilitary group fighters in Yousifiyah town, some 25 km from Baghdad, killing three group fighters and wounding four, a police source said.

As some unidentified gunmen opened fire on a Sahwa leader and his bodyguards in Hawijah city, some 220 km from Baghdad, three bodyguards were killed while the leader suffered injuries.

Two people were killed and four injured when some gunmen blew up bombs in three houses of policemen in the early hours Saturday in Amriyat al-Fallujah area, just south of the Fallujah city, some 50 km from Baghdad.

In a separate incident, gunmen shot dead a civilian near his house in Fallujah, a source said.

In Baghdad, a government employee was killed when a sticky bomb detonated in his car in Doura district, an interior ministry source said.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has said that almost 6,000 civilians were killed and over 14,000 injured in Iraq from January to September this year alone.