Two suicide car-bombings, along with a string of other attacks in and around Baghdad today, have left 14 people dead, police and army officials said.

A suicide car-bomber rammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing five soldiers in Mahmoudiyah, about 19 miles south of the capital. Several other soldiers were injured, according to army Lieutenant Odai al-Zeiadi.

A second Iraqi army checkpoint in the southern Baghdad suburb of Bueitha was also hit by a suicide car bomber, killing one soldier, al-Zeiadi said. Six other soldiers were injured, he said.

Unidentified gunmen assassinated three members of the Qadisiyah provincial council as they were heading to an internet café in the western neighbourhood of Khadhra, said police 1st Lieutenant Mohammad Al-Hiyali.

In Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City, an employee of the Ministry of Trade was killed in a drive-by shooting, said police 1st Lieutenant Talib Naim.

“Salman Lazim Shikara was heading to work when gunmen in a speeding car sprayed him with machine guns inside his car,” Naim said.

Explosives were thrown into the compound of a British security firm in western Yarmouk neighbourhood, killing one Iraqi guard and injuring two others, said police Major Falah Al-Mihamadawi. Witnesses said the armed attackers had driven up in a speeding car.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi patrol detonated at dawn in Latifiyah, killing three and injuring another three soldiers, said a Babil provincial police spokesman.

Latifiyah is located about 20 miles south of Baghdad in a Sunni insurgent-heavy area known as the Triangle of Death.

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