Violence in central and northern Iraq killed eight people, four of them troops, on Sunday, security officials said. In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb killed three soldiers in a town south of the ethnically mixed northern oil hub of Kirkuk, police Colonel Ahmed al-Barazanchi said.
"An IED (improvised explosive device) earlier today hit a dismounted army patrol in Rashad," he said. "Three soldiers were killed." Also near Kirkuk in the town of Leylan, a drive-by shooting killed a civilian, Barazanchi said. It was unclear why the victim was targeted.
Kirkuk, 240 kilometres (150 miles) north of Baghdad, lies at the heart of an oil-producing province which is at the centre of a dispute between Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds.
In the city of Mosul further north, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle at a joint police-army checkpoint killing a soldier and wounding four other people, including a soldier and a policeman, police said.
While violence has dropped across Iraq since its peak in 2006 and 2007, Mosul remains one of the country's most unstable cities. Separate drive-by shootings in towns in the confessionally mixed central province of Diyala killed two civilians, police Major Firaz al-Dulaimi said.
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