9 people killed, 36 wounded in Iraq's violence

Nine people were killed and 36 wounded in bombings and shootings in northern and central Iraq on Sunday, the police said. In one attack, two soldiers and a policeman were killed and 30 others wounded in two explosions near the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The first one occurred inside an under-construction house in the town of Shora near Mosul, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. As Iraqi security forces rushed to the scene of the blast, another car bomb went off, killing two soldiers and a policeman and injuring 30 people, he said. Nine soldiers and 14 policemen were among the wounded, while the rest of the wounded were civilians, including four children, the source said, adding that the blast also destroyed several military vehicles and three nearby houses. The attackers apparently created an initial explosion to attract security forces and people, then they set off another blast to get heavier casualties, he said. In Baghdad, unidentified gunmen using silenced weapons intercepted a car in the northern part of the capital and shot dead three civilians and wounded a fourth, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua. In Iraq's Sunni dominated province of Anbar, a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in the city of Heet, some 160 km west of Baghdad, killing two soldiers and wounding another, a provincial police source told Xinhua. In a separate incident, another soldier was killed and three wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near an army patrol in the town of Amriyat al-Fallujah, some 45 km west of Baghdad, the source said. A third roadside bomb hit a federal police patrol in north of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, damaging a police vehicle and wounding a policeman aboard, the source added. Violence is still common in the Iraqi cities despite the dramatic decrease since its peak in 2006 and 2007 when the country was engulfed in sectarian killings.