Gang guns down girls suspected of prostitution

Police investigating the shooting in the southern Dora neighbourhood said the two female victims were 15 and 19-year-old relatives. They said a 14-year-old brother of the younger victim was also killed and their mother was wounded.

The woman's husband is suspected of being behind the killing, possibly to avenge the family honour, police officials said.

An official with Iraq's interior ministry said attacks on suspected brothels in the capital and in the southern city of Basra have been on the rise this year.

Elsewhere, a civilian and a policeman were killed and nine were wounded when a bomb exploded in central Baghdad when police tried to defuse a bomb residents found in the garbage near a restaurant.

In a separate incident, an Iraqi security officer was killed when a bomb attached to his car exploded in western Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

Street crime and vendettas appear to be soaring in Iraq as sectarian fighting wanes and the US military prepares to withdraw its forces by the end of next year.

Criminals and insurgents are exploiting security gaps as Iraqi politicians bicker over the formation of a new government more than three months after parliamentary elections.

None of Iraq's main political groups won a clear majority in the March 7 vote and the new 325-seat legislature has met only once. It is scheduled to meet again on July 14.

Militants from the Sunni and Shiite communities fought each other in 2006 and 2007 – the height of Iraq's sectarian violence – and between them killed thousands of innocent Iraqis from both sides of the sectarian divide.

They pushed the country to the brink of civil war with their quest to dominate Iraq and claim moral superiority through the intimidation of unveiled women, bombing restaurants, liquor stores and places of entertainment.

While sectarian violence has significantly subsided in the last three years, violent crime has surged. Iraqi security forces have blamed a series of bank robberies and attacks on gold jewellers and money changers on al-Qaida-linked insurgents intent on filling their coffers.

Last week, at least 15 people died when gunmen wearing military uniforms tried to storm Iraq's central bank in Baghdad.

And in May, At least 14 people were killed in a mass raid by gunmen on jewellers' shops in the capital, Baghdad.