Kirkuk: Violence in central and
northern Iraq killed eight people, four of them troops, on Sunday,
security officials said.
In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb killed three
soldiers in a town south of the ethnically mixed northern oil
hub of Kirkuk, Police Colonel Ahmed al-Barazanchi said.
"An IED (improvised explosive device) earlier today
hit a dismounted army patrol in Rashad," he said. "Three
soldiers were killed."
Also near Kirkuk in the town of Leylan, a drive-by
shooting killed a civilian, Barazanchi said. It was unclear
why the victim was targeted.
Kirkuk, 240 kilometres (150 miles) north of Baghdad,
lies at the heart of an oil-producing province which is at the
centre of a dispute between Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds.
In the city of Mosul further north, a suicide bomber
blew up a vehicle at a joint police-army checkpoint killing a
soldier and wounding four other people, including a soldier
and a policeman, police said.
While violence has dropped across Iraq since its peak
in 2006 and 2007, Mosul remains one of the country`s most
unstable cities.
Separate drive-by shootings in towns in the
confessionally mixed central province of Diyala killed two
civilians, police Major Firaz al-Dulaimi said.
In the capital Baghdad, a magnetic "sticky bomb"
attached to a car killed one person and wounded four in Wathaq
Square in the city centre, an interior ministry official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
PTI
