Iranian gas pipeline workers killed in Iraq attack

Masked gunmen killed 18 people, most of them Iranians, working on a gas pipeline during a nighttime attack outside the northeastern Iraqi town of Muqdadiya on Friday, witnesses and officials said. Separate attacks across the country killed 18 other people.

One worker wounded in the pipeline assault said that attackers sped up in three cars as he and his colleagues were digging a trench to extend the line, as part of a deal Iran signed in July to build a pipeline and import gas into Iraq to fuel power plants in Baghdad and Diyala province, where the attack took place. 

"Three of them got out of a car and started firing on the workers inside and outside the trench," Ibrahem Aziz told Reuters by phone from a hospital.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on the workers, 15 of whom were from Iran. But officials told Reuters that the Iraqi arm of Al-Qaeda had been active in the area.

Officials said the workers were employed by an Iranian oil and gas company, but did not give its name. The three other people killed were Iraqis. Eight workers were also wounded, medical and local officials said.

Also Friday, a car bomb went off near a security checkpoint in the western city of Ramadi, killing five policemen and wounding seven others, said police officials.

In a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad, gunmen shot and killed two government employees in their car. And police said a bomb exploded near an outdoor market in Madain area, just south of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding four.

A car bomb exploded inside a fish market in Baghdad's southeastern Shia-majority suburb of Nahrwan, killing four and wounding 14, police said.

At night, six people were killed and 18 others were wounded in a car-bomb explosion in a commercial street in a town just south of Baghdad.

Medics in nearby hospitals confirmed the casualty figures to The Associated Press for all the attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.

Violence in Iraq is at the highest level in at least five years. More than 8,000 people have been killed this year, according to the United Nations. 

Earlier Friday, 22 Iraqi suspects facing terrorism charges escaped from a prison in northern Baghdad after killing a security guard, but most were rearrested later in the day, officials said.

The stunning jailbreak from al-Adela prison triggered a police manhunt backed by helicopters that ended with one of the escaped prisoners dead and 13 rearrested. Eight remain at large.

The prisoners had lured a guard into their cell while his comrades were sleeping, claiming an inmate there was critically ill. They then stabbed him to death, two senior security officials said.

Jailbreaks are frequent in Iraq and, as with other security breaches, have cast doubt on the ability of the authorities to secure the country, which is mired in sectarian tensions.

Al Jazeera and wire services