Security Summary: January 3, 2007

Iraqi children grieve following two killings in Sadr City today

BAGHDAD - Police found 27 bodies in Baghdad over the past 24 hours, many bearing signs of torture and gunshot wounds, an interior ministry source said.

BAGHDAD - Five mortars hit the Shi'ite neighbourhood of Shula in northwest Baghdad, wounding nine people, an interior ministry source said.

RAMADI - A woman and five children were wounded by an insurgent mortar attack in Ramadi on Tuesday, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

YATHRIB - Gunmen stormed a house and killed six members of a Shi'ite family on Tuesday in the mainly Sunni town of Yathrib, near Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

HILLA - Gunmen killed two former Baath party officials near the town of Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - The Central Criminal Court of Iraq convicted 48 security detainees between Dec. 8 to 28, for various crimes including murder, kidnapping and illegal possession of weapons, the U.S. military said. The court sentenced a Syrian, a Saudi and a Sudanese man to death in connection with "terrorist acts".

BAGHDAD - A car bomb near an intersection wounded one person in Mansour district in west-central Baghdad, police said.

KIRKUK - The corpse of a man was found shot dead and tortured in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad, police said.

RAMADI - U.S. forces conducted a string of raids in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's restive western province of Anbar, and detained 23 suspects with ties to senior Al Qaeda leaders, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier when it exploded near his patrol south of Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

From Reuters/Alternet