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3 policemen, 1 mayor killed in attacks in Iraq

15 July 2013 17:46 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Three policemen and one mayor were killed Monday in separate bombings and shootings across Iraq, police said, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

In one attack, a policeman was killed and seven wounded in the morning when a booby-trapped car went off near a passing police patrol in the southwestern part of the city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Separately, gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead an anti- terrorism police officer in front of his house in eastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua.

Elsewhere, in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, Ahmed al- Zarkoushy, the mayor of al-Saadiyah, survived unharmed a truck bomb explosion near his convoy in the center part of the town, some 130 km northeast of Baghdad, wounding one of his bodyguards, a provincial police source told Xinhua.

In a separate incident, a policeman was killed by a roadside bomb explosion near his house in Diyala's capital of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, the source said.

The attack came in the wake of violent attacks that swept the country on Sunday evening, which killed some 40 people and wounded over 137.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, as the past four days of attacks left more than 160 people dead and over 370 others wounded.

The spike in bloodshed raised fears that Iraq is sliding back into a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.