2 killed, 8 wounded in attacks in Iraq

Two people were killed and eight wounded in separate attacks by gunmen in central Iraq on Thursday, police said. In northern central Iraq, a policeman was shot dead by gunmen using silenced weapons near his house in the city of Baiji, some 30 km north of the Salahudin's provincial capital city of Tikrit, which is about 170 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Also in the province, gunmen shot dead a member of a government- backed Sahwa paramilitary group near his house at a village, just south Baiji, the source said. The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after Sahwa's leaders became dismayed by al- Qaida's brutality and religious zealotry in the country. In Baghdad, gunmen opened random fire from their guns in al- Aamil district in the southern part of the capital, wounding three civilians, while two more civilians were wounded by a similar attack in Saidiyah district in southern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua. Meanwhile, three people were wounded when a Katyusha rocket struck their house in Tarmiyah area, some 40 km north of Baghdad, the source said. Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears 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. The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has said that almost 6,000 civilians were killed and over 14,000 others injured in Iraq from January to September this year.