14 killed in insurgent violence in Iraq

Up to 14 people were killed and 14 others wounded in shootings and bombings, mainly targeting security forces, in Iraq on Tuesday, police said. In Iraq's western province of Anbar, four soldiers were killed and three others wounded when a land mine struck their patrol in Amriyat al-Fallujah area, near the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. In a separate incident, Commander of the Army's 10th Division Ali al-Hashimi was wounded in his foot in a clash with gunmen near the town of Khaldiyah, some 80 km west of Baghdad, the source said. Also in the province, a sticky bomb attached to a military vehicle exploded and killed an intelligence officer on a main road in south of Fallujah, the source added. Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December last year. Earlier, the police said that nine people were killed and 10 others wounded in separate bomb attacks in northern and central Iraq. In one of the attacks, five policemen were killed and seven others wounded in two suicide bomb attacks targeting a federal police base in the city of Mosul, the capital of Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua. The attack occurred in the morning when two suicide bombers blew up their explosive vests among a crowd of policemen at their base in the western part of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, the source said. Iraqi security forces cordoned off the scene and imposed several-hour curfew in the western part of the city, the source added. The Sunni-majority Nineveh province has long been a stronghold for insurgent groups, including al-Qaida militants, since the U.S.- led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In Iraq's Salahudin province, two soldiers were killed and three others wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near an army patrol in the city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua. Also in the province, a woman and a child were killed when a roadside bomb explosion missed the car of a leader of a government- backed Sahwa paramilitary group, who escaped the attack unharmed near the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, the source said. The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after the latter adopted hardline Islam and exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities. Iraq is witnessing its worst violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.