A shooting and two car bombs in Iraq have left at least two people dead and wounded 26 in the western and northern parts of the country, officials have said.
Police said one attack took place on Wednesday morning when gunmen sprayed a police checkpoint with bullets in the western city of Fallujah, killing three policemen.
In a separate incident in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, police say a car bomb exploded near the offices of a Kurdish party, wounding 20 people.
A suicide car bomber hit a checkpoint manned by Kurdish security forces, killing one Kurdish security member and wounding six others. Al Jazeera’s Omar Al Saleh, reporting from Duhok in northern Iraq, said the attacks are “another sign of deteriorating security in Iraq”.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media.
Wednesday’s attacks follow shootings and a bombing which killed seven people in Iraq on Tuesday.
Wave of unrest
Violence has ebbed in Iraq, but attacks are still frequent. Security forces moved against anti-government protesters in northern Iraq on April 23, sparking clashes in which 53 people were killed, while dozens more died in subsequent violence, including revenge attacks on security forces. The wave of unrest, which killed more than 200 people, raised fears of a return to sectarian conflict that plagued Iraq from 2006 to 2008. With the Tuesday attacks, at least 71 people have been killed in violence so far this month, more than a third of them police, according to AFP news agency figures based on security and medical sources.
