22 people killed in attacks across Iraq

A total of 22 people were killed and 65 others wounded in separate attacks and suicide bombings across Iraq on Thursday, security and medical sources said. The deadliest attack of the day occurred in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad during morning rush hours when a car bomb and two suicide bombers detonated at a court and a nearby police headquarters in Baghdad's central district of Karrada, leaving up to 10 people dead and 46 others wounded, a police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, spokesman of Baghdad Operations Command, told reporters that the security forces killed the attackers who tried to storm the court in Karrada. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks. In Anbar province, clashes erupted between Iraqi army and gunmen, believed to be linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, an al-Qaida breakaway group in Iraq, north of the militant- seized city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, killing five militants, a provincial police source said. Meanwhile, four people were killed and 10 wounded by artillery and mortar shelling on several neighborhoods in Fallujah, a medical source from the city hospital told Xinhua. Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December last year. In northern Iraq, an off-duty soldier and a civilian were killed by gunmen at a village south of the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua. Two more soldiers and three civilians were also wounded in two bomb attacks in Mosul during the day, the source said. Elsewhere, a soldier was killed and another wounded when they were attacked by gunmen in the city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, while three children were wounded in a separate roadside bomb explosion near a primary school in the city, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Iraq is witnessing some of its worst violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.