Policeman “seriously injured” in shooting incident west of Baghdad
Representational photo
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) A policeman was seriously injured in a shooting incident west of Baghdad on Wednesday, a security source told Baghdad Today.
“Unidentified gunmen in a car opened fire at a police officer of the Justice Ministry’s prisons protection sector in the area between Ghazaliya and Abu Ghraib neighborhoods west of Baghdad, leaving him in a pool of blood,” the source said.
The injured cop was carried to a nearby hospital, sustaining severe injuries, the source added.
Earlier in the day, a police officer was shot dead by a sniper while on duty in a border area between Diyala and Salahuddin provinces.
Violence in the country has surged further with the emergence of Islamic State extremist militants who proclaimed an “Islamic Caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The surge in violence between armed groups and government forces has resulted in over 3 million internally displaced persons across Iraq and left more than 11 million in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
A total of 117 Iraqi civilians were killed and another 264 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in November, according to casualty figures recorded by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on Sunday.
Iraq declared the collapse of Islamic State’s territorial influence in Iraq earlier in November with the recapture of Rawa, a city on Anbar’s western borders with Syria, which was the group’s last bastion in Iraq.