IRAQ: Bombs killed at least 21 people in Baghdad yesterday, police said, in three separate attacks that underlined the security challenge facing Iraq's still incomplete government.
In the first attack, a bomb aimed at Iraqi police commandos killed five civilians and wounded seven police in the New Baghdad district. It was one of a number of attacks across the country, including another car bomb in Shia east Baghdad that killed at least five people and wounded 13. Later yesterday a bomb outside a mosque killed 11 people.
Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki sought to fill the interior and defence ministry posts to complete a government announced on Saturday that he hopes can avert a sectarian civil war.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed three men and wounded seven among a crowd of day labourers seeking work on farms north of Baghdad. The attack occurred at Aswad, a mainly Sunni town near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of the capital. The labourers were mostly from nearby Huwaider, a Shia town.
In Baquba itself, gunmen shot dead three old men sitting in front of a house, police said. In northern Iraq, four people were killed in a drive-by shooting in Mosul.