12 killed in Iraq attacks

Updated at 7.28pm

BAGHDAD: Two women and a child on their way by foot to a holy city for a religious festival were among 12 people killed in a fresh flare-up of violence in Iraq on Sunday, officials said.   

The women and the seven-year-old were hit by a roadside bomb as they walked from the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, towards the shrine city of Karbala for religious ceremonies due on March 9, a security official said.   

The festival marks 40 days after the holiest day on the Shiite calendar, commemorating the killing in 680 of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in Karbala.   

The official said Sunday's attack, around 90 kilometres south of Baghdad, was aimed at a passing US patrol but hit the pilgrims instead.   

In another incident, a mortar which struck a police station and adjoining house in the northeastern town of Muqdadiyah killed two policemen and four members of a family, police said.   

Other violence was focused in the capital, where two civilians were killed by bombs and an Iraqi police officer was shot dead, apparently the latest victims of sectarian violence ravaging Baghdad.   

A security official said a civilian died and two were wounded in a bomb blast aimed at a police patrol in the mainly Sunni southern district of Dura.   

Another civilian was killed and four were wounded in a car bombing in the downtown Karrada area, the official said.   

In another incident, a police officer was gunned down and two more policemen wounded when their patrol came under fire in the Shiite district of Kadhimiyah.   

The attacks came as a large force of US and Iraqi troops conducted house-to-house searches in east Baghdad's notorious Shiite militia bastion of Sadr City.   

Hundreds of troops set up checkpoints and visited homes in the Jamila district on the outskirts of the area, where a police station is due to be converted into a fortified base for a joint US-Iraqi force.   

Sheikh Rahim al-Daraji, the mayor of Sadr City, told reporters that local people had agreed to cooperate with the operation.   

According to the Iraqi government, Operation "Fardh al-Qanoon" (Imposing the Law), a massive push by US and Iraqi forces to quell sectarian violence in the capital, is beginning to have an impact.   

Figures for February compiled by the Iraqi defence, interior and health ministries show that at least 1,646 non-combatants were killed by the country's warring factions last month, down eight percent on January's toll.