Mosul, July 12: Gunmen shot dead two policemen in the main northern city of Mosul on Sunday while a soldier and a pro-government militiaman were killed in separate attacks, security sources said.
Gunmen opened fire at the policemen in the central Zangili neighbourhood of Mosul and then fled, the police said. Outside the city, on the road to Baghdad, another soldier was wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up.
A soldier was meanwhile killed in Tel Afar northwest of Baghdad when unidentified assailants threw a hand grenade at a patrol, the military said.
A fourth person was killed when a bomb exploded in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province north of Baghdad, police there said.
The victim was a member of the anti-Qaeda Sahwa militia, police said. Another member of the militia which had joined with US and Iraqi forces in 2006 and 2007 to fight the Islamist militants was hurt in the blast.
Although overall levels of violence in Iraq have fallen markedly since their peak in 2006 and 2007, deadly attacks against civilians and security forces in Baghdad occur almost every day.
Attacks are also frequent in Diyala and Nineveh provinces.
Mosul, the capital of the mainly Sunni province of Nineveh, has remained a hotbed of insurgent activity even as levels of political violence have fallen off in much of the rest of the country.
–Agencies