By DPA
Baghdad : At least 34 people were killed, including police officers and members of the Awakening Councils, and 35 wounded, across Iraq, police sources and media reports said Tuesday.
In the southern city of Nasiriyah, 16 people were killed and 22 injured, including women and children, when a bomb went off in a bus heading to Basra, carrying visitors from Najaf, the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency said.
Police sources told VOI that the bomb was detonated on Tuesday at noon in the area between Om Oneij and Haql Saba in the city, some 350 km to the south of Baghdad, targeting a US truck that was passing beside the bus.
In another development, two members of the Awakening Councils were killed and three injured when a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle bomb in the city of Falluja, 70 kilometres west of Baghdad, VOI said.
The explosion targeted an Awakening Councils checkpoint in the north of the city. The explosion damaged two other vehicles that were located nearby.
The Awakening Councils are local police squads located mainly in Iraqi Sunni provinces to counter the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
In Kirkuk, some 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, three more members of the Awakening Councils were injured when an explosive device was detonated targeting their patrol in the main road between Howeija and Abbasy districts, sources told VOI.
Two police officers were also wounded when a bomb went off targeting an Iraqi patrol in the military district in central Kirkuk.
In another news, police sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that three civilians were killed by US air raids in Tikrit, some 180 km north of Baghdad.
However, a US military spokesperson in Baghdad said the three were terrorists killed when a group of bombers were targeted near the village of al-Dur.
People had told police they had heard airstrikes and explosions hitting areas near their houses, sources said. When police came, three men were found dead.
Areas nearby had been witnessing intensified US air raids since the late hours of Monday and lasted through early Tuesday.
Four police officers and a child were injured in Karbala, south of Baghdad, when a bomb went off near a downtown hospital, VOI said.
In Mosul, gunmen clashed Tuesday morning with police near a security checkpoint in eastern Mithaq district, VOI cited a security official as saying.
Four policemen, four gunmen and a civilian were killed in the clashes.
Separately, three US soldiers and an interpreter were killed in a homemade bomb attack in Diyala, the US military said Tuesday.
The soldiers were patrolling on foot when the blast occurred about 3 pm, the military said.