At least 25 More killed by attacks in Iraq
'Pakistan Times' Foreign Desk

BAGHDAD (Iraq): At least 25 people were killed in attacks across Iraq Monday in Baghdad where a revised security plan is being put in place to restore stability, security officials said.

For its part the defence ministry said that a total of 26 militants were killed in Iraq since Sunday, including 23 in Baghdad.

Gunmen ambushed a bus carrying workers to Baghdad international airport and sprayed passengers with bullets, killing four and wounding nine, a security official and a medic said.

The bus was ambushed in west Baghdad, near the airport. A medic at Baghdad's Yarmuk hospital said he had received the bodies of four victims. "They all were shot dead," he said.

Three Iraqis were killed in a bomb attack in a market at Zafaraniyah in south Baghdad, a security official said.

The bomb was placed under a parked car in the market, he added.

Five members of one family were also brutally shot dead in the notorious Dora district of Baghdad, he said, while a policeman was killed by gunmen in a separate attack in the capital.

In the flashpoint city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, four people were killed in different attacks, police said. Separately, three devotees returning from the annual hajj Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj were wounded outside the capital when their bus struck a roadside bomb.

The defence ministry said a series of raids and firefights had resulted in the death of 26 militants since Sunday across Iraq.

"Iraqi forces chased terrorists in different operations during the last 24 hours and killed 23 terrorists and arrested four others" in Baghdad, it said.

Another two were killed in the northern city of Mosul and one in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold in the western Anbar province. The statement follows the weekend announcement by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of a major crackdown in Baghdad as part of a revised security plan.

Just hours after Saturday's announcement, 30 militants were killed in a fierce firefight in central Baghdad, state television reported. Maliki revised the security plan for Baghdad, implemented since June last year, after it proved a dismal failure.

According to the United Nations, more than 100 people are killed daily in the savage sectarian violence tearing the capital apart.

Saddam's Trial after Hanging

Another report says that Saddam Hussein's trial for the killing of180,000 Kurds in the 1980s resumed Monday with the late dictator’s seat empty, nine days after he went to the gallows.

The court’s first order of business was to drop all charges against Saddam.

Six co-defendants still face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from a military campaign code-named Operation Anfal during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war.

Chief Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa said the court decided to stop all legal action against the former president, since ``the death of defendant Saddam was confirmed.''

All seven defendants in the Anfal case, including Saddam, had pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saddam and one other man also pleaded innocent to the additional charge of genocide.●