Five killed in Iraq violence

Violence in central and north Iraq on Wednesday left five people dead and 22 wounded, security officials said, just two days after the country's bloodiest day in more than a year. In Wednesday's worst attack, two people were killed and seven wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the home of a police chief north of Baghdad, an interior ministry official said. The attacker had targeted the home of Tarmiyah police chief Brigadier General Tawfeeq Ahmed, who was not in the house at the time of the attack. One civilian was also killed and three others wounded when gunmen opened fire on a shop in the southeastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Zafraniyah, the official said. Five others were wounded in separate roadside bomb attacks in west and north Baghdad. In the central town of Jalawla, in restive Diyala province, agricultural engineer Ahmed Mohammed Amin was killed by a roadside bomb that detonated near his car, the provincial security command centre said. Jalawla lies in disputed territory claimed by both Kurdish regional authorities and the central government in Baghdad. A policeman was killed in the main northern city of Mosul when a bomb exploded near a convoy of vehicles transporting judges, a police first lieutenant in the city said. All of the judges escaped unharmed, the policeman said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Seven other people were wounded when three roadside bombs exploded in the disputed northern city of Kirkuk, a security official said. The blasts occurred near the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which is the dominant political force in Iraq's Kurdish region. Wednesday's violence comes two days after attacks in 18 cities across the country killed 74 people and wounded more than 300, Iraq's deadliest day since May 2010. Violence in Iraq has declined from its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common. A total of 259 Iraqis were killed in attacks in July, the second-highest figure for 2011.