Explosions in Iraq Kill at Least 10

Tensions between Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year. Militants strike almost daily and have staged at least one big attack a month.

The latest violence followed more than a week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community.

No group claimed responsibility for any of Monday's attacks, which targeted government officials, police patrols and members of both the Sunni and Shi'ite communities.

Seven people from the same Sunni family were killed by a bomb planted near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad.

In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla, also in the south, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing two other people, police said.

"We heard the sound of a big explosion and the windows of our office shattered. We immediately lay on the ground," said 28-year-old Mohammed Ahmed, who works at a hospital near the site of the explosion.

"After a few minutes I stood up and went to the windows to see what happened. I saw flames and people lying on the ground."

In the capital Baghdad, five people were killed by a parked car bomb targeting pilgrims before a Shi'ite religious rite this week, police and hospital sources said.

Although violence is far lower than during the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, about 2,000 people have been killed in Iraq this year following the withdrawal last December of U.S. troops, who led an invasion in 2003 to overthrow Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

SUNNIS PROTEST

Violence also hit Iraq's disputed territories, over which both the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region claim jurisdiction.

Three militants and one Kurdish guard were killed in the oil-producing, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, where militants driving a car packed with explosives tried to break into a Kurdish security office.

Earlier on Monday, two policemen were killed in Kirkuk when a bomb they were trying to detonate exploded prematurely. An army official and his bodyguard were also killed in a drive-by shooting in the south of the city.

Kirkuk lies at the heart of a feud between Baghdad and Kurdistan over land and oil rights, which escalated last month when both sides deployed their respective armies to the swath of territory along their contested internal boundary.

Efforts to ease the standoff stalled when President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence, suffered a stroke and was flown abroad for medical care in December.

Maliki then detained the bodyguards of his Sunni finance minister, which ignited anti-government protests in the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold on the border with Syria.

A lecturer in law at Baghdad University said the protests could help create the conditions for militant Islamist groups like al Qaeda to thrive.

"Raising tension in Anbar and other provinces with mainly Sunni populations is definitely playing into the hands of al Qaeda and other insurgent groups," Ahmed Younis said.

More than 1,000 people protested in the city of Samarra on Monday and rallies continued in Ramadi, center of the protests, and in Mosul, where about 500 people took to the streets.

In the city of Falluja, where protesters have also staged large rallies and blocked a major highway over the past week, gunmen attacked an army checkpoint, killing one soldier.

Protesters are demanding an end to what they see as the marginalization of Sunnis, who dominated the country until the U.S.-led invasion. They want Maliki to abolish anti-terrorism laws they say are used to persecute them.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, himself a Sunni, was forced to flee a protest in Ramadi when demonstrators pelted him with stones and bottles.

The civil war in neighboring Syria, where majority Sunnis are fighting to topple a ruler backed by Shi'ite Iran, is also whipping up sectarian sentiment in Iraq.

"The toppling of President Bashar al-Assad and empowerment of Sunnis (in Syria) will definitely encourage al Qaeda to regain ground," Younis said.

(Reporting by Ali al-Rubaie in Hilla, Mustafa Mahmoud and Omar Mohammed in Kirkuk, Ali Mohammed in Baquba and Ahmed Rasheed and Aseel Kami in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Alison Williams)

View the original article here

At Least 2 Firefighters Near Rochester Shot Dead at Fire Scene

William Spengler, 62, shot and killed himself after a gunfight with a police officer in Webster, a Rochester suburb, Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said.

"It was a trap set by Mr. Spengler, who laid in wait and shot first responders," Pickering told a news conference.

Separately, a police officer in Wisconsin and another in Texas were shot and killed on Monday, according to police and media reports.

The attacks on first responders came 10 days after one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history that left 20 students and six adults dead at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and intensified the debate about gun control in the United States.

Spengler was convicted of manslaughter in 1981 for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer, according to New York State Department of Corrections records. After prison he spent eight years on parole.

"We don't have an easy reason" for the attack on the firefighters, Pickering said, "but just looking at the history ... obviously this was an individual with a lot of problems."

Spengler opened fire around 5:45 a.m. after two of the firefighters arrived at the house in a fire truck and two others responded in their own cars, Pickering said.

Pickering appeared to wipe tears from his eyes at an earlier news conference when he identified the dead firefighters as Lieutenant Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka. Chiapperini was also a police lieutenant.

The injured firefighters, one of whom was in critical condition, were identified as Joseph Hofsetter and Theodore Scardino. Off-duty Police Officer John Ritter was hit by gunfire as he drove past the scene.

Pickering said police had found several types of weapons, including a rifle used to shoot the firefighters. As a convicted felon it was illegal for Spengler to own guns.

Police had not had any contact with Spengler in the "recent past," Pickering said.

Four houses were destroyed by the fire and four were damaged, Pickering said.

COPS TARGETED

Police Officer Jennifer Sebena, 30, was found dead on Monday in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburb of Wauwatosa, police said.

Sebena was on patrol between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. and wearing body armor when she was shot several times, police said. She was found by another officer after she did not respond to calls from the police dispatcher.

In Houston, Texas, an officer with the Bellaire Police Department died after a shootout at around 9 a.m. and a bystander was also killed, according to local media reports.

A spokesperson for the Houston Police Department was not immediately available for comment. A police officer answering the telephone confirmed media reports but declined further comment. A suspect was in the hospital, according to reports.

Before Monday's killings, the Washington-based National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reported that 125 federal, state and local officers had died in the line of duty this year.

Forty-seven deaths were firearms-related, 50 were from traffic-related incidents, and 28 were from other causes, it said.

(This story is corrected with spelling of gunman's name throughout, Spengler not Spangler)

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by David Brunnstrom and M.D. Golan)

View the original article here