4 killed in attacks in Iraq

Four people were killed and six others wounded in separate bombings and shootings in Iraq on Sunday, police said. In Iraq's Salahudin province, an engineer who works for a local electricity department was killed and three of the department's employees were wounded when gunmen attacked their car near the city of Balad, some 80 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb struck an army patrol in the city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding a soldier, the source said. Another civilian in the same province was shot dead by gunmen while he was driving his car near a village outside the city of Shirqat, some 280 km north of Baghdad, the source said, adding that a member of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group was critically wounded in a sticky bomb explosion in his car in Shirqat during the day. In Baghdad, gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead a restaurant owner in his restaurant in Doura district in the southern part of the capital, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua. Separately, a police officer was critically wounded when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated while he was driving in the town of Madain, some 30 km southeast of Baghdad, the source said. Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, almost 7, 000 Iraqis were killed and over 16,000 others injured from January to October this year.