Gunmen kill 15 in Baghdad gold heist: police

Baghdad: Gunmen shot dead 15 people, mainly goldsmiths, and made off with gold and cash in a bustling shopping area of Baghdad on Tuesday, an Interior Ministry source told Reuters.

The brazen daylight heist took place on a long, busy street lined with shops in southwest Baghdad, usually heavily protected by Iraqi security forces.

They set off a roadside bomb near the shops, killing four bystanders and wounding three, city police officials said.

Then they opened fire on 12 shops, killing nine gold shop owners or their workers and two bystanders. They threw percussion grenades into the shop as a distraction, then fled, police said.

A witness said he heard an explosion, and the Interior Ministry source said police had defused a number of bombs left by the gunmen.

"I heard an explosion and then I saw four dead bodies on the ground close to the gold shops," the witness said.

Overall violence in Iraq has dropped sharply since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07 but bombings and shootings are still a regular occurrence.

An Iraqi politician elected to parliament for the cross-sectarian Iraqiya alliance was gunned down outside his home in the restive northern city of Mosul late on Monday, further fuelling tensions after the inconclusive March 7 election.