At least four killed in fresh violence in Iraq (Roundup)

Dec 1, 2009, 15:22 GMT

Baghdad - At least four people were killed in fresh violence across Iraq on Tuesday, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

In the troubled northern city of Mosul two civilians were killed near their home in western Mosul by 'unknown gunmen' early Tuesday, police said.

A police colonel was also fatally shot in the eastern Mosul neighbourhood of al-Tahrir, they added.

Mosul, situated some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, and its surroundings is among the most ethnically diverse regions in Iraq, and also among the most dangerous.

Insurgents continue to launch near-daily attacks in the area, with deadly effect, despite successive security pushes that police say have netted hundreds of suspects.

In the disputed northern city of Kirkuk, gunmen shot and wounded a soldier returning home from duty on Tuesday, police there told dpa.

Tuesday's attack came after armed men on Monday threw thermal grenades at the Artists' Syndicate in the nearby town of al-Huwaija, injuring 11 people, police told Baghdad's Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

Political tensions in Kirkuk, which many Kurds hope to make the capital of a future independent state but which Arab and Turkmen politicians view as an integral part of Iraq, have been high in the run-up to the 2010 parliamentary elections.

Iraq's election law was stalled for months by rancorous debate over the thorny question of voting in the city. Last week, the largest Arab political bloc in the city threatened to boycott the polls.

To the west of the capital, three members of a government-allied Sunni militia were injured in an attack on a checkpoint near the western Iraqi city of Falluja on Tuesday morning, police there told dpa.

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by members of the local Sahwa, or 'Awakening,' militia in al-Karama, north of Falluja, injuring three militiamen.

The area was formerly the site of some of the worst fighting between insurgents and US and Iraqi forces.

But the city has been relatively quiet since US and Iraqi forces enticed local Sunnis, many of them former Iraqi soldiers or former insurgents themselves, to switch sides with promises of money, weapons, training and jobs in the Interior Ministry.

In Wassit province, security forces seized a weapons cache in a farm south of Kut city. The cache embraced light and medium arms,' the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The statement said that the cache was found relying on an intelligence tip-off, the Aswat al-Iraq reported.

Security forces also arrested a suicide bomber, affiliated with the Al-Qaeda in Iraq Organization, north of Hilla city, in Babel province, the statement added.