Eight Kurds die in border ambush

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=161207&version=1&template_id=42&parent_id=18

Eight Kurds die in border ambushPublished: Monday, 16 July, 2007, 02:52 AM Doha Time


Iraqi Kurds carry the bodies of two of the seven Iraqi border guards out of the morgue in Sulaymaniyah yesterday
SULAIMANIYAH: Gunmen yesterday killed seven Iraqi border guards and a civilian in an ambush on the Iranian frontier near Penjwin, in the autonomous Kurdish north, a security official said. “At 9am (0500 GMT) one of our patrols came under attack from unidentified gunmen,” said Brigadier General Ahmed Deskara, a senior border guard commander stationed in the nearby city of Sulaimaniyah.
One of the seven guards killed was an officer, he added.
Border guards have come under attack in the past from an extreme Islamist group which calls itself Al Qaeda in Kurdistan - formerly Ansar al-Islam - which operates along the porous border between Iran and Iraq.
Meanwhile, three policemen including an officer were killed and two others wounded during clashes with armed men west of the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, according to local police.
And in the village of Aziziyah south of Baghdad gunmen burst into the home of a local city councillor, Hassim Jassim, and killed his wife and son, according to Police Lieutenant Ali Kadhim.
Jassim was not in the house at the time of the attack, he added.
Just outside the northern Iraqi oil refinery town of Baiji, a Turkish truck driver died in a roadside bomb blast, according to local police.
Meanwhile, 24 Iranians being held in an Iraqi prison near the border with Iran succeeded in escaping on Saturday night, the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) reported Sunday.
In Baghdad, seven Iraqis were killed in three incidents yesterday and two US servicemen were killed in separate incidents the previous day.
VOI cited a security source in Wassit province, 180km south-east of Baghdad, as reporting the prison escape, and said that police had managed to recapture four.
The source, who declined to be identified, told VOI the 24 Iranians had broken through the prison’s main gate to make their escape.
The report said a search for the escaped prisoners was underway and a state of siege declared in the area of Badra, 80km east of the Wassit capital of Kut.