BAGHDAD — Carloads of attackers descended on a police chief’s house northeast of Baghdad at dawn yesterday, killing the official’s wife, two brothers and 11 guards, and kidnapping three of his grown children, Diyala provincial police reported.
The attack, which occurred when the police chief was not at home, was one of the boldest and bloodiest in months of stepped-up violence around the city of Baqouba, where al Qaeda in Iraq and affiliated groups have been fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces and local insurgents who have turned against al Qaeda.
Diyala provincial police said the attackers, who arrived in “many cars,” also abducted two sons and a daughter of police chief Col. Ali Dilayan al-Jorani, head of central Baqouba’s Balda police station. The children were described as young men and a young woman, but their ages weren’t immediately available.
Col. al-Jorani’s two slain brothers were serving as guards at the house, in Kanaan town northwest of the city of Baqouba, which is 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. The bodies of some guards, many of whom were also Col. al-Jorani’s relatives, were found on a nearby road, apparently after being seized at the house, police said.
In southern Iraq, a parked minibus exploded at a bus terminal in the town of Qurnah, and a hospital director said at least 16 persons were killed and 32 wounded.
Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hammadi, police chief in Basra, the provincial capital 60 miles to the south, said a minibus loaded with rockets, ammunition, C4 explosives and benzene blew up and caused a nearby car to explode in flames — leading to an early report of two car bombs.
Police cordoned off the area and arrested two Egyptians, he said.
In northern Iraq, bombings struck a Shi’ite mosque in a town near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing at least 19 persons and wounding 25, police said.
The attack started at 1:45 p.m. when a parked car exploded near worshippers leaving the Thaqalain mosque after Friday prayers in the predominantly Shi’ite town of Dakok, about 30 miles south of Kirkuk, police said after touring the scene of the blasts.
About five minutes later, a suicide bomber was spotted driving toward the mosque but policemen in a nearby station opened fire on him and he exploded, police said.
All of the deaths were in the mosque explosion, although an undetermined number were wounded in the second blast.
The continuing violence came a day after the four-year U.S. military death toll in Iraq passed the 3,500 mark, after a soldier was reported killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad.
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