Gunmen Attack Laborers’ Bus

BAGHDAD — Several gunmen emptied their automatic rifles into a bus carrying Iraqi workers from a factory west of Baghdad, killing as many as 17 people, police and hospital sources said Tuesday.

Police said 12 people died in the attack, but a source at one hospital said it had received 17 bodies and about 20 wounded patients.

“We were on the bus going home. Two cars with about 10 insurgents opened fire on us. We don’t know why. We are just workers,” said Adil Zamal, who was being treated for multiple gunshot wounds to his back at Noor Hospital. “We fell to the floor. They just kept shooting and shooting until they ran out of ammunition,” he said.

In other violence, two police officers were killed by a mortar round in Baghdad’s southern outskirts, and three more were killed by a rocket attack in Hillah, south of the capital, police said.

An aide to Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr was shot dead while stepping out of his car in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. A paramedic and an Iraqi woman were killed during clashes between the Iraqi army and insurgents in Mosul.

Three Health Ministry workers were slain in their car in the capital’s eastern New Baghdad district. Gunmen killed a Pakistani truck driver in Tikrit, and a police officer and a child were killed by gunmen in Basra.