Iraq PM orders security shakeup as unrest kills 21

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a shakeup of senior security officers today as violence killed 21 people, the latest in a wave of unrest that has cost more than 380 lives in May.
"After consultation with security officials, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, today issued orders ... For changes in the operations commands and the leadership of the divisions," a statement on Maliki's website said.
One of those changes was to sack Staff Lieutenant General Ahmed Hashem, the head of the Baghdad Operations Command, which is responsible for security in the capital, a senior official told AFP.

The shakeup comes a day after Maliki said he would change the country's security strategy as well as top personnel.
"We are about to make changes in the high and middle positions of those responsible for security, and the security strategy," Maliki told reporters yesterday.
Iraq is struggling to contain a wave of unrest that has killed 387 people so far this month, including 21 who died today.

A car bomb near a mosque in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, killed six people and wounded at least 18, officials said.
Dozens of mosques have been attacked so far this year, including two Shiite places of worship in Hilla, south of Baghdad, where bombs killed 13 people yesterday.

Near Baquba, north of Baghdad, gunmen killed a Sunni couple in their home but spared their three children, while two roadside bombs at a market near the city killed three people and wounded seven, police and a doctor said.
And clashes between police and gunmen near Baquba killed two police and wounded six, according to the same sources.
In Tarmiyah, also north of the capital, clashes between soldiers and gunmen, and a suicide bombing killed three soldiers and wounded at least seven, security and medical officials said.
Two car bombs exploded in a Shiite Turkmen neighbourhood of the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu, killing three people and wounding 44, and causing extensive damage to 10 houses, police and a doctor said.

And two roadside bombs detonated in a sheep market in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing two people and wounding 25, officials said. The explosions also killed a number of sheep, seen lying at the site.