Interpreter for U.S. military in Iraq killed by relatives, police say

IRAQ

Interpreter for U.S. allegedly slain by kin

An Iraqi interpreter for the U.S. military was gunned down Friday by his son and nephew north of the capital after he refused their demands to quit his job, a police official said.

The attack was one of a number of incidents that killed at least 27 people across the country, a reminder of the dangers facing Iraqis despite a sharp drop in violence over the past few years.

Hameed al-Daraji was shot in the chest in his house in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, police Lt. Emad Muhsin said. His son and nephew were arrested and said they were members of Ansar al-Sunna, a Sunni extremist group that sanctioned the killing, Muhsin said.

Iraqis working for the U.S. military in the country have been targets of such groups, which view them as traitors.

Among other violent incidents Friday, gunmen ambushed a checkpoint near the Anbar province town of Qaim, a former insurgent stronghold, killing seven Iraqi soldiers. In the restive northern city of Tuz Khormato, a car bomb blew up near the house of a Turkmen council member, killing at least eight people.

And in an attack in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, gunmen killed an employee of a local irrigation department, his wife and their two children as part of an apparent tribal dispute over water distribution, officials said.

-- Associated Press

NORTHERN IRELAND

Bomb found in van; village evacuated

British army experts defused a 300-pound bomb left by Irish Republican Army dissidents in a van outside the police station in a Northern Ireland border village Friday, police said.