9 killed in Iraq's violence

Nine people were killed and six wounded in separate bombings and shootings across Iraq on Saturday, said the police. A man and his son were killed when a roadside bomb went off near their shop in central Tikrit city, some 170 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. A fierce clash erupted in the city of Shirqat, about 280 km north of Baghdad, when gunmen attacked a police checkpoint, killing three, a local police source said. Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead two bodyguards of a judge while they were driving in the town of Hamam al-Alil in south of Nineveh 's provincial capital city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, a provincial police source said. The judge was not with his off-duty bodyguards at the time, the source said. In the eastern province of Diyala, an Imam of a Sunni mosque was killed and three people were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua. Two women were killed and a third was injured by gunmen who barged into their house early in the morning in south of Baquba, the source said. Moreover, a civilian was killed and two policemen were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near a police patrol in northeast of Baquba, the source added. Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is bringing the country back to a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.