By IANS,
Baghdad: Seven people were killed and 15 wounded in separate shooting and bombing incidents in Iraq, police said Sunday.
Three members of an anti-terrorism force were killed and six others wounded late Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy in Mahaweel town, some 60 km south of here, Xinhua reported citing a police officer.
A soldier was killed Sunday morning in front of his house by gunmen in Shirqat city, some 280 km north of the capital Baghdad, a police source said.
In Iraq’s Diyala province, two government-backed Sahwa group fighters were killed and two others wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint in Buhruz town, just south of the provincial capital city of Baquba, about 65 km northeast of here, acoording to a police source.
The Sahwa militia, also known as the ‘Awakening Council’ or the ‘Sons of Iraq’, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-US Sunni insurgent groups, who turned against the Al-Qaida group after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.
In another incident, a police explosive expert was killed and two policemen were wounded while the expert was trying to defuse an improvised explosive device in Maqdadiyah city, some 40 km northeast of Baquba, the source said.
Two policemen and three civilians were also wounded in separate roadside bomb attacks across the province Sunday, the source added.
The attacks came a day after a wave of deadly bombings across the country that killed more than 60 people and wounded over 200.
The massive bombings Saturday evening pushed the Iraqi security forces to announce a major offensive against insurgent groups in desert areas in the western and northwestern parts of the country to hunt down the terrorist groups.
The dire situation raises fear that the country is sliding back to the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.