Fighting erupts in Baghdad after week of calm

"BAGHDAD, April 6 (Reuters) - Twenty-two people were killed and 55 wounded in clashes in Baghdad, police said on Sunday, the worst violence in the capital since Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called his fighters off the streets a week ago."

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"The unrest comes only days before U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and U.S. commander General David Petraeus are due to deliver key testimony to the U.S. Congress on progress in Iraq."

"In the north, two buses carrying students back to university in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, following a weekend break were stopped by gunmen at a fake checkpoint.

One of the buses escaped but male students from the other bus were loaded onto trucks and taken away before being freed by Iraqi security forces hours later, said Brigadier-General Khalid Abdul-Sattar, security spokesman for Nineveh province.

The event served as a reminder of the continuing unrest in the Sunni Arab and mixed areas of the north at a time when attention has been focused on violence in Shi'ite areas in Baghdad and the south.''

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