3 killed, 7 wounded in Iraqi violence

Three security members were killed and seven people wounded in separate attacks in Baghdad and Iraq's eastern province of Diyala on Monday, the police said. In Diyala, gunmen using silenced weapons at dawn attacked a checkpoint in central Baquba, the provincial capital city, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, killing two policemen and a member of a local Awakening Council group, a source from the provincial operations command told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Two more policemen were wounded by the gunmen who fled the scene after the attack, the source said. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb went off in the morning near a police patrol in Zaafaraniyah district in southeastern Baghdad, damaging a police vehicle and wounding two policemen aboard along with three bystanders, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. Monday's attacks followed an overnight deadly attack when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a major Sunni mosque of Umm al-Qura during evening's prayer late on Sunday, killing 28 people, including a lawmaker, and wounding some 40 others. Last week, al-Qaida militant group in Iraq announced a campaign of 100 attacks across the country, starting from Aug. 15 to take revenge for the death of its former leader Osama bin Laden. On Aug. 15, a series of bomb attacks in seven provinces in central and northern Iraq that left nearly 70 people killed and more than 260 wounded in the newest escalation of violence in the country.