Suspected Sunni gunmen bombed and badly damaged a span over the main north-south highway leading from Baghdad on Tuesday - the third bridge attack in as many days. The attack occurred 35 miles south of Baghdad and just six miles south of a bridge brought down on Sunday.
According to the AP, the blast at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday hit a bridge connecting the villages of al-Qariya al-Asriyah and al-Rashayed in northern Babil province. No injuries were reported.
About 60 percent of the bridge was damaged, and cars could still pass over it via one lane, police said.
Elsewhere, fierce clashes broke out between joint U.S.-Iraqi forces and al-Qaida fighters in the city of Baqouba Tuesday morning, leaving two Iraqi soldiers and six fighters dead, police and hospital officials said. The fighting also prevented university students at nearby colleges from taking their final exams, according to the provincial police center.
Meanwhile, gunmen stormed the house of the Sunni mayor of Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, forcing the family members outside, then blowing up the house, the police officials said. Najim al-Harbi, a member of the Iraq Islamic Party, was not home when the attack took place.
On the political level, Iraqi lawmakers on Monday voted to oust controversial parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni who had said from the speaker's chair that those who attack American soldiers should be treated as heroes. He was voted out in a closed session of the Shi'ite-dominated, 275-member legislature.
Al-Mashhadani's deputy, Khaled al-Attiyah, who chaired the closed session, assumed the duties of the speaker until a replacement is chosen.
