7 people killed in Iraq's violence

Seven people were killed, including five women, and 16 wounded in separate attacks across Iraq, police said on Friday. In the early hours of the day, two women were killed and two wounded when a mortar round landed on their house in al-Mahlabiyah area, in west of Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Late on Thursday, unidentified gunmen broke into a house in Ur neighborhood in the eastern part of Baghdad and shot dead three women before they fled the scene, an Interior ministry anonymously told Xinhua. In a separate incident, 11 young men playing football were wounded on Thursday night when two mortar rounds hit a football pitch in western Samarra city, some 120 km north of Baghdad, a local police source said. In the morning, gunmen shot dead a shop owner at his shop in Nahrawan area in southeastern part of Baghdad, the source said. In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a civilian was killed and two wounded when a bomb planted in his shop detonated in the city of Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of Baghdad, while a soldier was wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near his patrol in Buhruz area, near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua. Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is sliding the country back toward a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.