KIRKUK, Iraq - Gunmen stormed a house in northern Iraq and killed a woman and her two nieces in an early morning attack, while a roadside bomb killed an education ministry official in Baghdad on Tuesday.
At 2:30 am (2330 GMT) in ethnically-mixed and oil-rich Kirkuk, gunmen entered a house in the east of the city and shot dead Moha Jihad Jumaa, a schoolteacher, and her nieces, Walaa Waheed Hassan and Manal Mohan. "The armed men used silencer pistols," said police Brigadier General Zain al-Abidine. "We have started an investigation into this attack. It carries the stamp of terrorism." Meanwhile, in the south Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora, a senior education ministry official Abdelamir Hussein was killed by a magnetic "sticky bomb" affixed to his car, an interior ministry official said. Two other passengers in the car, also officials in the education ministry, were wounded in the 8:00 am (0500 GMT) blast. Also in Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded at a checkpoint near the former headquarters of the finance ministry, wounding four Iraqi soldiers and two civilians. The building housed the ministry of finance until a massive truck bomb exploded in front of it on August 19, 2009. That blast at the finance ministry, and another at the foreign ministry, killed 95 people in total. Tuesday's violence came a day after two suicide car bombs killed five people at an entrance to the heavily-fortified Green Zone, which is to play host to an Arab League summit in less than a month. Violence in Iraq has declined dramatically from its peak in 2006 and 2007 but attacks remain common, especially in Baghdad. A total of 247 Iraqis died as a result of attacks in March, according to official data.AFP