25 killed, more than 60 injured in suicide attacks, shelling across Iraq

World Monday 04/April/2016 22:00 PM
By: Times News Service
25 killed, more than 60 injured in suicide attacks, shelling across Iraq

Baghdad/Ankara: About 25 people were killed on Monday across Iraq, most of them in suicide attacks targeting members of militias and military forces, security officials said.
IS, which controls territory in northern and western Iraq, claimed several of the attacks on statements on its Amaq news agency. More than 60 people were wounded.
A suicide car bomb blew up in the centre of Basra, the largest city in Iraq, killing five people, and another targeted a convoy of the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF), a coalition of militias, killing five, in the town of Mashahdeh, north of Baghdad.
People wearing suicide belts blew themselves up at a military checkpoint in the north of Baghdad, killing five, and in the middle of a crowd of PMF outside a restaurant in the southern city of Nassiriya, killing four.
Two members of the government's security forces were killed in suicide car bombs in the province of Al Anbar, west of Baghdad, and a third was killed south of Baghdad by an explosive device, local security sources said.
Two people were also killed when mortar rounds hit the district of Abu Ghraib, west of the capital, they said.
Meanwhile, aircraft from a US-led coalition on Monday destroyed the Turkish consulate compound in Mosul in northern Iraq which has been occupied by IS militants since June 2014, the Turkish foreign ministry said.
It said in a written statement that Turkey's views had been sought and its approval given for the air strikes, which were carried out at 3am.
Meanwhile, a Singapore man accused of illegally exporting US parts found in explosives in Iraq, has been extradited to the United States to face charges on Monday, the Justice Department said.
Lim Yong Nam, 42, was indicted in 2010 for sending radio frequency modules between 2007 and 2008, violating a US trade embargo. The parts were later found in unexploded improvised explosive devices (IED) in Iraq by US coalition forces.
The devices caused the majority of the casualties against Americans fighting in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, according to the US indictment.
Lim had been detained in Indonesia since October 2014, the Justice Department said.
"After a long investigative process, Mr Lim is back on US soil to answer for his actions," Sarah Saldaña, director of the Department of Homeland Security's US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement released by the Justice Department.
The department said Lim and several co-conspirators had routed 6,000 radio frequency modules, 16 of which were discovered in Iraq.
Lim will appear before a federal magistrate judge in Washington, DC at 1:30 Eastern (17:30 GMT) on Monday.