Iraq arrests al-Qaeda leader as blasts kill 8

Eight people were killed and 28 injured in Iraq on Friday following bomb attacks in and around the capital Baghdad, as security officials said they arrested a top al-Qaeda militant. The attacks are the latest in worsening unrest that has hit the country despite weeks of wide-ranging operations targeting militants. Friday's violence struck across the country - in Baghdad and to its north and south - with gun and bomb attacks hitting both Shiite and Sunni areas. In the deadliest incident, gunmen burst into a house in a mostly Shiite town north of Baghdad and killed three people. Violence in Hilla, south of the capital but also predominantly Shiite, left two dead. Meanwhile a joint command centre of military and police in northern Iraq said security forces arrested seven Sunni militants linked to al-Qaeda. They included the self-styled finance minister of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaeda front group, who had reportedly tried to enter Iraq from neighbouring Syria with fake documents. The command centre did not give further details about the arrests. A half-dozen separate shootings and explosions in the capital Baghdad and Mosul, a mostly Sunni Arab city in north Iraq, killed two people and wounded 12 others. Violence has surged in Iraq this year to levels not seen since 2008, when the country was emerging from a brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict that claimed tens of thousands of lives. Attacks have killed more than 3580 people since the beginning of 2013, according to figures compiled by AFP. Analysts and diplomats link the increased bloodshed to anger among Iraq's Sunni Arab minority over their alleged ill-treatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government. But the prime minister has vowed to press on with the security force operations, insisting they are producing results, pointing to the arrest of hundreds of alleged militants and the killing of dozens of others. Source: AFP