Gunmen in northern Iraq stopped a bus filled with Christians and members of a tiny, mostly Kurdish religious sect on Sunday, police said, separating out the groups and taking 23 of the passengers away to be shot.
The attack came on a violent day in Baghdad, with at least 20 people killed in car bombings, most in a double suicide strike against a police station in a religiously mixed neighborhood.
Two car bombs went off in the parking lot of a police station in the Iraqi capital on Sunday, killing 13 people and injuring some 80, police said. According to the AP, the explosions occurred at about 10 a.m. in Baiyaa, a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of western Baghdad, a policeman said.
According to him, the victims included policemen and civilians. He said the blasts damaged many homes near the police station.
Meanwhile, the Fallujah city council chairman, a critic of al-Qaeda, was killed on Saturday. Sami Abdul-Amir al-Jumaili was shot dead by attackers in a passing car as he was walking outside his home in central Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, according to police.
The U.S. military confirmed the killing, and provincial officials condemned it. "He was one of the many good people of the province who worked to help the city of Fallujah rebuild and regain life," the provincial government said in a statement. "This murder was a crime against all of the citizens of Iraq. We again strongly condemn this cowardly back-stabbing act."
