Eight killed in Iraq attacks

Kirkuk - Bombings and shootings in northern Iraq, mostly targeting security forces, left eight people dead on Tuesday, including six soldiers and a police general, security and medical officials said.

In the deadliest attack, two near-simultaneous roadside bombs detonated as a military convoy was passing along the road between the town of Tuz Khurmatu, 175km north of Baghdad, and nearby Al-Adhaim.

The blasts killed six soldiers and wounded two others, according to a military intelligence officer and Dr Mehdi Abdullah al-Bayati of Tuz Khurmatu hospital.

In the ethnically-mixed northern city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed a police adviser to the provincial council and wounded two of his bodyguards while they were in a shop, a police official and Sadiq Omar Rasul, head of the provincial health department, said.

Major General Adnan al-Bayati died instantly when the attackers opened fire with machine guns, and his bodyguards were seriously wounded, the officials said.

Just north-west of Kirkuk, authorities found the mutilated corpse of a teenage boy, who police believe was killed earlier on Tuesday, according to Colonel Othman Hama Amin, a local police chief.

Ali Mohammed Ali, whose identity papers listed him as a 16-year-old Arab, was found with his hands, feet and head cut off, and with two gunshot wounds to his body.

Tuesday's violence came two days after two bomb attacks against security forces killed four - two policemen and two soldiers - in Tuz Khurmatu and the northern city of Kirkuk.

Violence in Iraq is down dramatically from its peaks in 2006 and 2008, but attacks remain common - 278 people were killed in August, according to an AFP tally based on reports from security and medical officials. - Sapa-AFP