19 killed in Iraq attacks
Bombings and a shooting killed at least 19 people around the
Iraqi capital Baghdad, Iraq on Thursday,
including soldiers and Shiite militiamen, officials said.
Police officials say the deadliest attack took place
Thursday afternoon when two suicide bombers set off their explosive belts
inside a Shiite militia headquarters in the town of Mishada, 30 kilometers (20
miles) north of Baghdad, killing seven Shiite militiamen and wounding 20 others,
reports AP.
Shiite militias have been fighting alongside government
forces against the Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group that seized vast
swaths of northern and western Iraq last year.
In a separate attack, gunmen in a speeding car opened fire
on soldiers manning a checkpoint in Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib,
killing three soldiers and wounding eight others, police officials said.
A bomb blast at an outdoor market killed four people and
wounded 12 in the town of Youssifiyah, just south of Baghdad. Another bomb
exploded on a commercial street in the nearby town of Mahmoudiya, killing two
people and wounding 10, police officials said.
In the town of Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber
drove his explosives-laden car into an army checkpoint, killing three soldiers
and wounding nine others.
Medical officials confirmed the casualties. All officials
spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to
journalists.
Iraqi lawmakers meanwhile approved a 2015 budget of 119
trillion Iraqi dinars (about $102 billion), with a deficit of 25 trillion
dinars (about $21.4 billion). The budget calculations are based on an assumed
oil price of $56 a barrel.
The approval marks an achievement for Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi's government as the previous administration never managed to approve
the 2014 budget due to political wrangling and the long-running dispute between
the federal government and the northern Kurdish region over rights to develop
and export oil.
Iraq has the world's fourth largest oil reserves, and oil
revenues make up nearly 95 percent of its budget. The price of oil has fallen
by about half since June to around $55 per barrel.
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