Suicide bombings in Baghdad: 6 killed

A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt Monday in a line of people waiting to receive government payments, killing six other people and wounding about 30, including children, police said.

Photo: Suicide bombings in Baghdad: 6 killed

Eight other people were killed in attacks elsewhere, including five members of a Shiite religious party gunned down in Baqouba and three policemen who died in separate incidents in Baghdad and Iskandariyah.

The suicide attack occurred in the mostly Shiite eastern district of New Baghdad at 9:40 a.m. as people lined up at a bank to receive government checks in compensation for food rations which were incomplete in the last few months.

Police Lt. Ali Abbas said the attacker joined the line and blew himself up while security guards were searching people before allowing them to enter the bank. The wounded included three children and nine women, he said.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed three brothers and two of their sons in an attack on a street in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Diyala police's Joint Coordination Center said.

All five were identified by police as members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's leading Shiite political party, police said.

A roadside bomb attack in Iskandariyah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Baghdad, killed two policemen and wounded another, said Babil police's information office. Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi policeman protecting electricity generating facilities near a hospital in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City, police said.

Also Monday, Iraq's former electricity minister, Ayham al-Samarie, escaped injury when a roadside bomb exploded near his three-vehicle convoy in Baghdad, but two bodyguards were wounded, said police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq, reports the AP.

I.L.