A total of 45 people were killed and 54 wounded in a string of attacks in different parts of Iraq Saturday, including shelling and clashes in the volatile Anbar province, security and medical sources said.
The main hospital in Fallujah city, some 50 km from Baghdad, received five bodies and seven injured people by the artillery and mortar shelling on the city neighbourhoods, which are still under full control of anti- government tribal fighters, Xinhua quoted a hospital source as saying.
The hospital, earlier in the day, received eight bodies and 16 wounded people by the sporadic shelling on the city since late Friday night and Saturday morning, the source added
Meanwhile, a civilian was killed and six were wounded in an artillery and mortar shelling on several neighbourhoods in Ramadi city, some 110 km from Baghdad, a provincial police source said.
The soldiers fought Al Qaeda militants in the districts of Albu-Farraj, near the highway in northern Ramadi, killing 20 militants and destroying one of their vehicles, Iraqi Operations Command of Anbar said in a statement.
The province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late last December.
In Iraq's Diyala province, seven family members, including women and children, were killed at dawn when several mortar rounds landed on a Shiite village near Baquba city, some 65 km from Baghdad, a police source said.
In another incident, a soldier was killed and two wounded when a booby-trapped house belonging to a wanted Al Qaeda militant detonated as the soldiers entered inside during a raid on the suspected hideout at a village near Saadiyah city, the source said.
In Diyala, a local Al Qaeda cell leader and his aide were killed when Iraqi security forces raided their safe house at a village, located some 25 km northeast of Baquba.
In Baghdad, a civilian was killed and 10 injured when a car bomb went off in Amriyah district
In addition, nine people were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in Baghdad's Saydiyah district. Four people were injured in a roadside blast in the city.
