(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The violence comes just days after a suicide car bomb outside Iraq's Shia religious foundation's headquarters in Baghdad matyred 25 people, and during a protracted political crisis that has raised sectarian tensions.
In the deadliest attack, at least two Al-Qaeda militiamen were killed and one was wounded when gunmen opened fire on their checkpoint in the town of Tarmiyah, 45 kilometres north of the capital, an interior ministry official and a medical source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A roadside bomb, meanwhile, detonated near an army patrol in the town of Mashaada, 30 kilometres (18 miles) north of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding three others, according to an army officer and a medic.
In Baghdad, police Lieutenant Colonel Nabil Hadi was shot dead by Wahhabi gunmen in the Jihad neighbourhood, in the capital's west, the interior ministry official said.
Also on Thursday, an alleged Al-Qaeda fighter being transferred out of a Baghdad prison seized a guard's gun and killed two guards and wounded another before shooting himself.
On Thursday the inmate managed to grab a weapon from a nearby guard and opened fire, a justice ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The prisoner killed two security force members -- a police major and a prison guard -- and wounded one other before taking his own life, the official added.
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