3 jewellers killed during robbery in southern Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP):

Masked gunmen killed three jewellers before fleeing with a large amount of gold in a sophisticated attack yesterday in southern Iraq, underscoring fears that street crime is soaring as sectarian fighting wanes.

The heist in the Shi'ite stronghold of Basra came two weeks after a similar robbery in Baghdad that left 15 dead.

Six gunmen stormed into three gold jewellery shops in the centre of Basra shortly before 8 p.m. local time, killed the owners, then fled with a large amount of jewellery, according to police and hospital officials.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information, said two people were wounded, including a customer and the father of one of those killed.

Police cordoned off the area, but the assailants had cars waiting for them and escaped.

Nobody claimed responsibility. But the head of the security committee of the Basra provincial council, Ali al-Maliki, said it was a well-planned attack in which the gunmen used pistols with silencers to avoid drawing attention.

Security officials attribute at least part of the past year's crime wave to militant groups looking for new ways to finance their operations as well as criminal gangs.

Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles (550 kilometres) south-east of Baghdad, was long controlled by Shi'ite militias before a United States-Iraqi military crackdown in 2008.

The heist was the deadliest attack on a day that saw eight people killed in bombings and shootings, including a member of a Sunni group fighting al-Qaida in Iraq in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. One member of the so-called Sons of Iraq was killed and another wounded when insurgents attacked their checkpoint, police said.

Separate incidents

A suicide bomber riding on a motorcycle also killed two bystanders and wounded five others while targeting an American military convoy in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad, police spokesman Major Ghalib al-Karkhi said.

Two other people also were killed in separate shootings and bombings in Baghdad and Tal Afar in north-west Iraq.

Iran's ambassador to Iraq, meanwhile, denied allegations that Iranian troops crossed the border into the northern, self-rule Kurdish region with tanks and artillery last week.