Ambushes on Iraq's deadly roadways killed seven people on Friday, as insurgents continued to launch attacks outside Baghdad, where US-led troops are pressing a three-month-old security plan.
Three policemen were killed and another two wounded when a suicide car bomber ploughed into a checkpoint they were manning south of Baghdad, police officials said. One day earlier, three US soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb, also south of the capital. Also on Friday, three truck drivers were killed on a road connecting the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, the latest in a series of attacks along highways in that area.
"Gunmen opened fire on the trucks near the village of Kharabat Rot, 35 kilometres (22 miles) north-west of Kirkuk, killing three drivers," said Captain Imad Mohammed Abdullah of the Kirkuk police.
In a subsequent attack gunmen stopped a car near a bridge inside the city and dragged the passengers, a man and his brother and a seven-year-old child, out of the car and shot them. One of the men died and the other two were seriously wounded, according to the director of Kirkuk General Hospital. He added that a hospital employee was shot and wounded in a separate attack. Another four people were wounded on Friday in a car bomb explosion near a major bridge west of Kirkuk, and a roadside bomb in the city itself wounded three people, including two women.
On Thursday, gunmen in army uniforms kidnapped 12 people at a fake checkpoint 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the city, while police rescued three truck drivers who had been kidnapped the day before.