10 killed, 20 wounded in attacks across Iraq

Ten people were killed and 20 others wounded in separate violent attacks across Iraq on Wednesday, police and medical sources said. In Anbar province, four civilians were killed and seven others wounded by artillery bombardment on several neighborhoods in the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Also in Fallujah, gunmen planted bombs in five houses of local officials and security officers and blew them up. But the blasts caused no human casualties as the families of the officials and officers had left their houses. Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December last year. Elsewhere, two policemen were killed when gunmen attacked their checkpoint at a marketplace in the city of Shirqat, some 280 km north of Baghdad. In a separate incident, a car bomb near the house of a police officer in the city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, was detonated in the morning, wounding five civilians and damaging several nearby houses. In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, two policemen were killed and four others wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol in the city of Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of Baghdad. Also in the province, a young woman was killed and four of her relatives were wounded when a mortar round landed on their house at a village near the provincial capital city Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad. The mortar was believed to be fired from a nearby military base while conducting an operation against militants. In Baghdad, gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead an army Brigadier General in Baghdad's central district of Karrada. Iraq is witnessing its worst violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.