Women's prison chief killed, 8 wounded in Iraq

Gunmen shot dead the head of a women's prison and wounded her driver in Baghdad on Tuesday, while seven people were wounded in bomb attacks in and around the Iraqi capital, an interior ministry official said. Gunmen using silencers shot dead Sajida Saleh Hassan, the director of a women's prison in the Kadhmiyah area of Baghdad, as she travelled by car in the Baghdad Jadida area of the capital's east, the official said. Her driver was wounded in the attack, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Roadside bombs wounded five people in the Adhamiyah area of north Baghdad, the official said, while another person was wounded when two bombs exploded in Abu Tshir, south of the capital. And one other person was wounded by a sticky bomb on a car in Jurf al-Nadaf, east of Baghdad, the official said. Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim, said in December 2010 that 341 adult women were serving jail sentences, while 241 were on remand, out of a total of 24,783 people held in justice ministry prisons. Violence in Iraq is down from its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common, killing 151 people in January, one of the lowest monthly tolls since the US-led invasion of 2003.