9 people killed in attacks in Iraq

Nine people were killed and four wounded in attacks in northern and eastern Iraq on Tuesday, the police said. In the early hours of the day, unidentified gunmen stormed the house of an Iraqi army officer at the town of Qaiyara near the city of Mosul, the capital of Iraq's northern province Nineveh, and shot him dead with three of his family members, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. In a separate incident, gunmen broke into a house before dawn in eastern Mosul and shot dead a man and two women before they fled the scene, the source said. Nineveh province has long been a stronghold for insurgent groups, including al-Qaida militants. It capital Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, is one of the country's most restive cities. In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, two people were killed and two wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their truck in al-Udheim town in north of the provincial capital city Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi army patrol near the town of Hibhib, 20 km northwest of Baquba, damaging a military vehicle and wounding two soldiers aboard, the source said. Diyala province, which stretches from the eastern edges of Baghdad to the country's border with Iran, has been a volatile area since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, despite repeated U.S. and Iraqi military operations against the militant groups. Violence is still common in Iraqi cities despite the dramatic decrease since its peak in 2006 and 2007, when the country was engulfed in sectarian killings.