Iraq violence kills 13

A spate of unrelated attacks around Iraq killed 13 people, including seven in the northern city of Mosul and four during a jewellery heist in Baghdad, police and other sources said yesterday.
Overnight, gunmen stormed into a notorious and poor district of the northern city of Mosul, killing six women and a man, police and medical sources said.
"Six women and one man were killed last night by gunmen who stormed into a home in Al-Tanak neighbourhood of Mosul," a police major told AFP. The district is infamous for its brothels, which are illegal in Iraq.
A source at Al-Mosul hospital confirmed that the bodies of six women and a man had been received. He said the women were aged between 20 and 40.
Mosul's Nineveh province is home to armed Islamic groups, some related to Al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, in the north of Baghdad, "gunmen detonated three sonic bombs in the Cairo neighbourhood as a distraction. When the bombs exploded, the gunmen attacked three jewellery shops, killing the owners and one other person while fleeing with the loot," an interior ministry official said.
Nine people were also wounded, he added.
Many jewellery stores have been stormed beginning last year, most of them in Baghdad. Security officials say insurgent groups may be carrying out such robberies to obtain much-needed income to fund operations.