27 killed in clashes and bomb attacks across Iraq

A total of 27 people were killed and 26 others wounded in separate clashes and bomb attacks across Iraq on Thursday, local police said.
In Salahudin province, four policemen were killed and 11 others wounded when several roadside bombs detonated near their patrol on a main road in east of Ishaqi area, some 110 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
Separately, Sunni tribal fighters backed by local police and army aircraft fought back attacks by Sunni militants affiliated with the Islamic State (IS), an al-Qaida offshoot, in the town of Duluiyah, some 90 km north of Baghdad, leaving one policeman killed and three others wounded, while at least ten IS militants were killed, the source said.
Also in the province, an unidentified sniper shot dead four IS militants in al-Zuwiyah village near the refinery city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, the source added.
In different area in the largely Sunni Salahudin province, local police and armed residents have been trying to rebuff the IS Sunni insurgent group, which frequently tried to conquer their cities and villages. The residents accuse the IS militants of imposing hardline of Islamic law in their areas.
Near Baghdad, a roadside bomb went off near an army patrol in Mashahda area, some 30 km north of Baghdad, killing an officer and a soldier and wounding three soldiers, a local police source said.
In Anbar province, a civilian was killed and three others wounded in artillery mortar shelling on the militant-seized city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, a medical source from the city hospital told Xinhua.
Meanwhile, twelve mortar rounds struck Zankoura neighborhood in the northern part of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, wounding six civilians including three women and damaging several houses, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua.
In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, an army helicopter gunship pounded an insurgent position in Himreen area, in the northern part of the province and killed at least three gunmen, a provincial police source told Xinhua.
Also in the province, two civilians were killed and another wounded in two attacks in and near the city of Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of Baghdad, the source added.
The security situation began to drastically deteriorate in Iraq on June 10 when bloody clashes broke out between the Iraqi security forces and hundreds of Sunni militants who took control of country's northern city of Mosul and later seized swathes of territories after the Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.