Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) – Seven Iraqi policemen were killed and injured Tuesday as a bomb blast targeted their police vehicle in Mosul city, a security official was quoted as saying.

“An explosive charge was remotely detonated, while a police patrol was inside a train station, west of Mosul, killing two policemen and injuring five others,” Captain Zayed Omar told BasNews website.

“Security forces immediately rushed to the blast site and carried the bodies of the two officers to the forensic medicine department, while the wounded were moved to a nearby hospital for treatment,” added Omar.

Earlier in the day, a SWAT officer was killed while another was injured after two bombs went off sequentially while a police vehicle was passing by al-Mokhisa village on the outskirts of Abu Saida district in Diyala.”

According to the latest casualty figures recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), a total of 104 Iraqi civilians and policemen were killed and another 177 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in March.

In its monthly statement released earlier this month, the UN agency said the number of civilians killed, excluding police, was 84, while 164 others were injured.

Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate, with 124 civilian casualties (33 killed, 91 injured), followed by Salahuddin with 12 killed and 26 injured, and Anbar with 11 killed and 22 injured.

Though most of the daily bombings go without a claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group is expected to be behind many.







</s>It's nine months since the group known as Islamic State was defeated in its stronghold of Mosul in northern Iraq but it's still not clear how many civilians were killed in the battle.

Hundreds of dead bodies belonging to civilians and Islamic State group fighters have been recovered by a group of volunteers in Mosul's Old City.

The team takes pictures with the dead bodies to keep a record.</s>Election posters plastered on the bullet-riddled wall of a girls’ school in the Old City of Iraq’s Mosul pledge a better future for those casting their ballot at a nationwide vote.

But the scenes of devastation that surround them almost 10 months after the Islamic State group (IS) was forced from the country’s second city belie the hopeful claims.

“Iraq is moving forward,” reads an advert for candidate Laith Ahmad Hassan, standing for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s Victory Alliance at the May 12 parliamentary poll.

“We will continue the process of reconstruction and offer the benefits to the people,” says a poster for contender Fares Sheikh Sadik from a Kurdish party.

The scars left from the months of gruelling fighting it took to oust IS from Mosul — the Iraqi capital of their so-called “caliphate” — are still visible all over the city.

Streets lie in ruins, decomposing bodies rot beneath rubble and unexploded ordnance poses a constant threat.

Despite this backdrop of devastation, candidates are trying their hardest to drum up support.

They have staged sporting and cultural events, handed out free cake to passersby and hired convoys of cars to cruise around the city blasting out music.

The prize is an attractive one and 938 hopefuls are vying for power in Nineveh province, where some 80 percent of the 2.3 million registered voters live in Mosul.

Thirty-four seats, including three for minority groups, are up for grabs in this melting pot region that has seen ethnic and religious differences often fuel conflict.

While those on the campaign trail are doing their best to sell themselves and their positive vision of Iraq, the people they are trying to convince seem split about the vote.

“After the liberation of Mosul it is a national duty to vote to change our lives and not just take advantage of the day off as during previous elections to have a holiday,” he tells AFP, his hands and trousers stained with oil.

“We must… elect people who will genuinely represent us and obtain compensation for the material and moral damage we suffered.”

After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mosul — a majority Sunni Muslim city with Kurdish and Christian minorities — became a stronghold for Al-Qaeda and supporters of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

At the last elections in 2014 — just before IS seized control — only 50 percent of voters in the city cast their ballots, with many put off by threats made by jihadists.

This time around unemployed Ammar Raad says he will skip the elections again.

“I came to collect my voter card so that others can’t use it illegally, but I am going to destroy it,” he says, standing in front of his wrecked house.

“I turned down 75,000 dinars ($60, 50 euros) that one candidate offered me to vote for him. No one inspires my confidence.”

This lack of trust in the politicians is palpable, as many consider that they simply fled when IS swept into Mosul in June 2014 and abandoned residents to their fate.

“I am going to vote, but to kick out the corrupt and the old faces who have done nothing,” says Abu Ahmad, a 55-year-old retiree.

As a sign of the upheavals in the province since the last vote, this time round some 75 percent of candidates are newcomers and the traditional Sunni parties have changed their names to avoid past associations.

“There is the risk that there could be a political earthquake that could shake up the province,” says political analyst Hamed Ali.

“New alliances supported by the security forces on the ground will create a new reality.”

The victory over IS — which Abadi declared across Iraq in December — was achieved with the help of paramilitary groups fighting alongside the armed forces as part of the Hashed al-Shaabi Popular Mobilisation Units.

The groups — who followed a call from top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani to battle IS — are still entrenched around the region and retain major clout.

“The militias are omnipresent in the province and control the security, and this favours the parties linked to them,” says lawmaker Farah Sarraj, who is running for the secular National Alliance of Vice President Ayad Allawi.

Sarraj said that with Mosul and the surrounding region still struggling to recover she also has fears that the vote could be rigged.

“Only some 20 percent of those displaced have returned to Mosul and the names of thousands of martyrs and disappeared are still on voting lists,” she says.

“It is the same situation with many members of IS who have now fled the country.”</s>Members of the Al-Suror Volunteer Team in Iraq zip body bags after they removed the bodies of those killed in the battles to retake Mosul's Old City in 2017.

MOSUL, Iraq — Nearly a year after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared this war-devastated city liberated from the Islamic State, a putrid odor still fills the air from thousands of corpses left in the rubble.

The bodies of both civilians and Islamic State militants can be found throughout Mosul, once Iraq's second-largest city, abandoned in bombed-out buildings, tossed in roadside rubbish heaps or discarded in and around the Tigris River.

“The sight and smell of these corpses is a constant reminder of our darkest days,” said Ayoub Thanoun, 26, a pharmacy assistant who now helps neighbors clear debris. “A large number of bodies are scattered in the houses, gardens, squares and even in some of our mosques.”

Ahead of the May 12 parliamentary elections. candidates here plant their campaign banners atop piles of brick and stones, most from ancient buildings now destroyed.

“The politicians are holding electioneering feasts on top of the bodies,” said Shihab Ahmed, 28, who lives in the Bab Lagash district, where most working-age males were tombstone engravers before the Islamic State invaded the city in June 2014.

About 100,000 people once lived in Mosul’s 1-square-mile Old City before the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, occupied the neighborhood. The United Nations estimates that more than 90% of the district was demolished in the fighting.

“I’ve spent my whole life in the Old City. And while there are many historic buildings officials need to preserve and protect, the government should do something to help the volunteers who have been working so hard to clear the corpses out of this neighborhood,” Ahmed said.

The task of removing the bodies is dangerous.

“Often the bodies of ISIS fighters are just dumped in a place. And when we come to lift and remove them, we find they’re still strapped to explosive vests or there are bombs hidden in the piles of corpses,” said Omar Mohammed, 30, an Old Mosul resident.

Sroor Al-Hosayni, 23, a nurse from Mosul, Iraq, leads a volunteer team inside a home packed with bodies of Islamic State fighters or civilians.

“We are all vexed with how to deal with the bodies,” said Ma’an Al Jammal, 26, a physician at Nineveh Medical College in Mosul. “The residents themselves are applying some sort of quarantine, but some have been injured from hidden explosives.”

The decomposing bodies also present health problems. The World Health Organization determined that those living downstream from the city are at risk of gastroenteritis from partially treated water that had been exposed to the bodies.

“We are lucky that the main supply of Mosul’s drinking water from the Tigris is located far north of the city,” Al Jammal said.

The United Nations held a workshop here in March with officials and residents to come up with a plan to remove what it estimates to be 8 million tons of "conflict debris." The volume of rubble is equivalent to three massive piles the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, according to the U.N.

“Unplanned disposal of debris can create serious health and environmental risks and burdensome economic liabilities in the future,” said Hassan Partow, a U.N. environment program manager working with the Mosul municipality to develop a strategy for rubble clearance.

Sroor Al-Hosayni, 23, a nurse in Mosul, isn’t waiting for the government to remove the bodies left on the ground and inside demolished homes in her neighborhood. She led her team of 30 volunteers to pull out the dead from the dirt and debris and place them in white plastic sacks.

“We gathered 52 bodies here and then the municipality takes them to be dumped,” Al-Hosayni said in a phone interview April 19, after spending the day retrieving the dead from a district in the Old City that saw some of the fiercest battles between government troops and ISIS militants.

Al-Hosayni’s mission began after her 14-year-old sister Nibras was killed in last year’s fighting. Her father died of a heart attack shortly after an airstrike.

“I promised the security forces to work for them as a nurse if they would help me bury my sister,” said Al-Hosayni, who now trains others in safe removal.

The training includes the use of protective gear, including gloves and masks, and how to treat scorpion stings, a common hazard when removing bodies from the charred remains of the homes and shops of the ancient city.

“The areas smell of death. It’s awful, but we have gotten used to it,” Al-Hosayni said. She said city officials suggested letting stray dogs eat the bodies. “There are lots of rats and cats, but no dogs. I told them there were not enough dogs to eat the corpses. There are thousands of bodies.”

The prime minister has said the civilian death toll in Mosul was almost 1,300. But that number was challenged by independent monitoring groups and The Associated Press, which estimated in December that as many as 11,000 civilians died between October 2016 and July 2017.

Al-Hosayni and her volunteers have removed 860 bodies so far.

“In many ways I’m doing this work in memory of my sister and my father,” Al-Hosayni said. “Dad taught me that actively caring for others is the best answer to the atrocities of the Islamic State.”

More: Six images tell story of Mosul's destruction

More: Mosul: Corpses, booby traps and snipers are everywhere in devastated city

More: Iraqi forces hoist flag over Mosul as fighting continues</s>An Iraqi policeman was killed and two others were injured in a roadside bomb blast in eastern Iraq on Tuesday, according to a local police officer.

The device exploded as a police patrol was passing north-east of Baquba city in Diyala province, Captain Habib al-Shammari said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Al-Shammari said an investigation has been launched into the attack.

Attacks against security forces and civilians have been on the rise in Diyala province in eastern Iraq in recent weeks.

Last December, officials in Baghdad declared that the ISIL terrorist group's military presence in Iraq had been all but dismantled after a three-year war.

However, from time to time, Iraqi officials announce operations against ISIL-affiliated "sleeper cells" in certain parts of the country.</s>At least 24 people were killed, and 13 were wounded in recent violence:

South of Dujail in 14th Ramadan village, gunmen killed 16 people and wounded four more at three different homes, which belonged to sons of Judge Rahim al-Marzouq. Most of the victims were women and children. It is unclear if this is the same attack as the one reported in Tarmiya, several miles south of Dujail. Reports of casualties have varied wildly, but another 20 casualties were reported there on Monday. There also were reports that Islamic State militants may have held the town.

A bomb targeting police at a Mosul train station killed two policemen and wounded five more. Four dumped bodies were found at another location.

A policeman was killed and two were wounded when a pair of bombs exploded in Mukhisa, near Baquba.

Two people were wounded by a bomb blast in Tarmiya.
• 526 Killed in Iraq or in Iraqi Operations near the Syrian Border During April; 1,444 Found in Mass Graves – April 30th, 2018
• Ten Foreign ISIS Wives Given Death Sentences; 10 Others Killed in Iraq – April 29th, 2018
• Five Foreign Women Condemned to Death in Iraqi Court; Four Killed in Iraq – April 26th, 2018
A bomb in Mosul, Iraq, kills and injures seven policemen.