A former city official was stabbed to death along with his wife and daughter in their home in a Shiite neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad, officials said Sunday. The knife-wielding attackers stormed the two-story house late Saturday, killing Ahmed Jwad Hashim, his wife and their daughter, and leaving a visiting nephew seriously wounded, according to police and hospital officials.
According to the AP, the slaughter occurred in Talbiyah, a middle-class neighborhood on the fringes of the Sadr City.
In other violence, gunmen ambushed a minibus carrying five female university employees to work Sunday morning in a mainly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad, seizing the driver but releasing the women unharmed after several minutes, police said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi troop reinforcements are expected to arrive in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday while tanks and helicopters are being sent for a big operation against al Qaeda, security officials said, according to Reuters. Major-General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, commander of military operations in Nineveh province, said additional Iraqi troops would arrive within hours from Baghdad, with more expected in the days after that.
Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters were being sent to Iraq's third largest city, 390 km north of Baghdad, for an offensive that he said would begin "very soon". "We will provide everything that is needed for a major operation," he said.
