15 killed in insurgent attacks in Iraq

Fifteen people were killed and 11 wounded in bombings and shootings, mainly targeting Iraqi security forces, in northern and central Iraq, the police said Wednesday. In northern Iraq, a booby-trapped car struck a police patrol in western the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing four policemen and two passers-by and wounding another policeman, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. In a separate incident, a policeman shot dead two gunmen who were caught planting a roadside bomb in southeastern Mosul, the source said. Also in Mosul, a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in southern the city, killing a female child at the scene and wounding three policemen, the source added. Elsewhere, three policemen were killed and a fourth was wounded in a roadside bomb near their patrol near the city of Duluiyah, some 90 km north of Baghdad, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua. In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a civilian was killed and six were wounded in a bomb explosion late Tuesday outside a mosque in al-Gatoon area, just west of the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua. In the morning, two civilians were killed in separate attacks by gunmen near Baquba, the source said. In addition, police explosive experts defused a car bomb loaded with about 200 kg of explosives on a main road used by security forces near a town of Bani Saad, some 20 km south of Baquba, the source added. Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is bringing the country back to a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.