FACTBOX: Security developments in Iraq

Following are security developments in Iraq at 8:30 a.m. EDT on Tuesday.* denotes new or updated items.

* BAQUBA – A car bomb killed 40 people and wounded 80 in the city of Baquba, 65 km (42 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

RAMADI – A suicide car bomb killed 13 people and wounded 14 others near a restaurant in western Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, a hospital source and police said.

* NEAR KERBALA – Gunmen attacked a small town near the southern city of Kerbala, killing five people including two women and wounding six others, police said. The attack forced 150 people to flee. The attackers then blew up 14 houses, police said. Kerbala is 110 km (68 miles) southwest of Baghdad.

* BAGHDAD – U.S. forces detained 18 militants on Monday and Tuesday during operations targeting al Qaeda in the Tigris River Valley and the country’s north, the U.S. military said.

* BASRA – Gunmen wounded an aide to the country’s top Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in a drive-by shooting in Basra in southern Iraq, police said. The aide’s bodyguard was killed.

* MOSUL – A girl was killed inside her schoolroom by a stray bullet in eastern Mosul, police said.

* MOSUL – A roadside bomb wounded four policemen when it struck their patrol in eastern Mosul, Brigadier-General Khalid Abdul-Sattar said.

* MOSUL – Two Iraqi soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb in western Mosul.

BAGHDAD – Three people were killed and eight wounded in car bomb attack in central Baghdad, police said. The target was an Iraqi police convoy.

BAGHDAD – Six people were killed and 26 wounded in fighting in the Sadr City district overnight, police and hospital sources said. The U.S. military said it had killed at least 10 fighters in Sadr City. Three were killed in one gunbattle in the slum, before U.S. troops ordered air strikes that killed another three, the military said in a statement. A spokesman said U.S. forces in a tank killed another four militants who attacked them in a separate engagement.

MOSUL – Gunmen killed a female lawyer and her sister in eastern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BASRA – Iraq’s defense minister left the southern city of Basra to return to Baghdad on Monday, transferring all duties and authority to Lieutenant-General Mohan al-Furaiji, commander of Iraqi armed forces in Basra, an officer said. Basra has been the scene of a crackdown on militias overseen by the central government.

MOSUL – Gunmen stormed an apartment and killed three women and a man on Monday in Mosul, police said.

NEAR KHANAQIN – Iraqi border guards clashed with smugglers trying to bring in 170 roadside bombs stacked on mules near Khanaqin in Diyala province, on the border with Iran, a border guard source said. The U.S. military said Iraqi officers discovered a cache of anti-tank mines after taking small arms fire from an unknown number of gunmen on Monday. It gave no location but the incidents appeared to be the same.