Iraqi violence: more killed, including six police officers

Violence around Iraq left more than a dozen people dead, officials said Thursday. Six Iraqi police officers were shot dead in Baghdad, while three Iraqi police were killed and four wounded in an attack in Samarra, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, a U.S. military official said. Gunmen in the capital killed politician Khazaal Jasib al-Saiedi, the head of the small independent Iraq Reforming Movement, Baghdad police's Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said.

In the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi translator working in the British consulate was shot and killed, Basra police said. The translator, identified as Basaam Abdelkadim, was abducted on Wednesday night, and his body was found on Thursday morning in western Basra, said Capt. Mushtaq Kadim of Basra police. He had been handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head, he said. A suicide car bomb attack against a police patrol on a highway in Iskandariyah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Baghdad, wounded seven policemen, local police said.

In Samarra, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting a vehicle carrying municipal workers killed four people and wounded another two, police in the city said. In the town of Khalis, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on two trucks carrying construction material, killing the driver of one truck and abducting the driver of the other, police said.

Gunmen also opened fire on a minibus carrying teachers to school outside Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, wounding one teacher, police said. About 700 Iraqis demonstrated in the Euphrates town of Samawah, about 370 kilometers (230 miles) southeast of Baghdad, to protest reports that Italian troops threw a grenade at the offices of prominent Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, local police said. In north-central Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces uncovered nine weapons caches over the past two days, the U.S. military command said Thursday.

The 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team seized nearly 1,000 rockets from three caches discovered on Tuesday, officials said. More than 60 large mortar rounds, nearly 80 fuses, ammunition and an anti-tank mine were also found.

Rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds were also found in the other six caches uncovered between the northern cities of Kirkuk and Balad, the military said in a statement, while the Iraqi Army uncovered an anti-aircraft gun and more than 250 anti-aircraft artillery rounds near the town of Adwar, 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Tikrit, on Tuesday, reports the AP. N.U.