| CNN | - |
(CNN)
-- At least 17 people were killed when gunmen attacked gas pipeline
workers about 50 miles northeast of Baquba, north of Baghdad, Iraqi
police officials in Baquba said Friday.
Gunmen shoot dead 18 gas workers in Iraq
Officials say 15 Iranians among the dead, with eight more workers wounded
Oil
tank trucks in Erbil, Iraq. A worker wounded in today’s assault said
the attackers sped up in three cars as he and his colleagues were
digging a trench to extend a pipeline. Photograph: Khaled Hasan/The New
York Times
Masked gunmen shot dead 18 oil and gas workers,
most of them Iranians, outside the northeastern Iraqi town of Muqdadiya
today, witnesses and officials said.
One worker
wounded in the assault said the attackers sped up in three cars as he
and his colleagues were digging a trench to extend a pipeline.
“Three
of them got out of a car and started firing on the workers inside and
outside the trench,” said Ibrahem Aziz by phone from hospital.
No group immediately claimed responsibility
for the assault, but officials said it bore the hallmarks of the Iraqi
affiliate of al-Qaeda which has carried out a string of attacks amid the
country’s worst spate of violence in five years.
Fifteen Iranians and three Iraqis were killed and a total of eight other workers wounded, medical and local officials said.
Iran
signed a deal in July to build a pipeline and import gas into Iraq to
fuel power plants in Baghdad and Diyala province, where the attack took
place.
In a separate incident, at least five
people were killed and 14 wounded when a car bomb exploded in southern
Baghdad’s outskirts of Nahrawan, police said.
A further six people were killed in a car bomb explosion in the town of Madaen, south of Baghdad, police said. – (Reuters)
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