17 killed in Iraq violence

Baghdad: Seventeen soldiers and policemen were killed and 12 others were wounded in separate overnight attacks targeting security forces across Iraq, police said on Saturday. Clashes and bomb attacks between gunmen and Iraqi security forces erupted in Jurf al-Sakhar area south of Iraq’s capital Baghdad, leaving five soldiers killed and seven others wounded, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. In Salahudin province, five policemen were killed and two wounded when gunmen attacked a police force on a highway near the city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua. (IANS)