Attacks Kill 8 People in Iraq
Two bombings targeting Shiite neighborhoods killed eight people in Baghdad on Tuesday as authorities found 15 bodies of Kurdish fighters in a mass grave in an area once controlled by the Islamic State group.
A bomb blast near a clinic killed five people and wounded 11 in the capital's New Baghdad district, police officials said.
A second bomb attached to a minibus exploded in Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City neighborhood, killing three passengers and wounding seven, police said.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualty tolls. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to media.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni Islamic extremists frequently target the country's Shiite majority, whom they consider heretics.
Meanwhile, a local official in the eastern Diyala province said the discovery of the mass grave, containing the bodies of 15 Kurdish fighters, was made Tuesday afternoon near the town of Sadiyah, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad.
Mohammed Hassan, the mayor of nearby Khanaqin, said the dead were members of Kurdish security forces known as peshmerga, and that IDs and uniforms were found with the bodies. The Kurdish fighters were captured and killed by the IS group during its stunning blitz across northern and western Iraq last year, he said.
Medical officials in Khanaqin hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief the media, confirmed receiving 15 bodies of men shot in the head.
Last week, authorities in Diyala discovered a mass grave containing 16 unidentified bodies in a village near Sadiyah.
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Associated Press writer Murtada Faraj contributed to this report.
