Seven people were killed and 23 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack targeting Iraqi security forces in south of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Saturday, a police source said.
A suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint and blew it up in the town of Yousifiyah, some 25 km south of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
Yousifiyah is located in the northern part of the sectarian mixed province of Babil, just south of Baghdad. The town has been part of latest Sunni insurgency against the Shiite-led government.
The security situation began to drastically deteriorate in Iraq on June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and hundreds of Sunni militants, who took control of the 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.