Baghdad clashes kill 6, including 4 policemen

Clashes between members of two local tribes in Iraq’s capital Baghdad have killed at least six people, including four policemen who intervened in the violence, the interior ministry said on Sunday.

Iraqi security officials, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said that the clashes late Saturday erupted over increased fees for a private power generator. The vast majority of Iraqis rely on private generators to compensate for daily long power cuts to public electricity.

The violence Saturday in Baghdad’s Saada area resulted in the deaths of four police officers, two of them commanders, after they had intervened to disperse a “tribal dispute”, the interior ministry said, revising an earlier toll.

A security official, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media, said the toll was updated after two policemen succumbed to their injuries.

Another nine officers were wounded, the ministry said. It said the force was attacked by “those who started the clashes”, and returned fire that killed two people.

Five of those involved in the clashes were wounded and several arrested, the ministry said.

Tribal feuds are common in Iraq, a war-scarred country awash with weapons, where the pettiest row can turn into deadly tribal clashes.

Tribes wield significant influence and often operate under their own moral and judicial codes, and they possess huge caches of arms.

Two people were killed and several injured when a section of a bridge under construction collapsed in southern Iraq, local authorities said.

The collapse took place late Saturday, with the rescue operation lasting more than 13 hours.

An AFP photographer reported that rescue workers laboured until morning to free those trapped in their vehicles under the twisted wreckage of the bridge on the main Karbala-Baghdad road.

Karbala’s civil defence agency said they had “rescued seven people and recovered two bodies” from under the collapsed structure.

A health official in Karbala told AFP late Saturday that at least six people were injured, some of them from Syria and Afghanistan.

All the injured were transported to the nearest hospital in Karbala, where Shiite pilgrims from other countries often travel to visit holy shrines.

The health official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the “pillars of the bridge collapsed while several vehicles were passing underneath it”.

As Iraq regains a semblance of stability after decades of conflict, many areas, particularly Baghdad, are witnessing a surge in construction and infrastructure projects, including the development of new bridges.

Agencies