Three killed in Iraq's violence

At least three people were killed and eight wounded in separate bomb and gunfire attacks in Iraqi capital Baghdad and eastern province of Diyala on Wednesday, the police said. In Baghdad, a bomb ripped through a marketplace in al- Husseiyniah district in northeast of the capital, killing a civilian and wounding six others, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. In Diyala province, unidentified gunmen shot dead a leader of a so-called Special Group, a Shiite militia said to be splintered from radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, in the town of Abu Sayda, some 95 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua. The group leader has been sentenced to death in absentia by an Iraqi court and is wanted by the Iraqi security forces, the source said. Special Group, a name given by the U.S. military to the insurgent groups operating in Iraq and backed by Iran, is allegedly funded, trained and armed by Iran's Quds Force. They are known in Iraq as the Brigade of Promised Day, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq and Kata'ib Hezbollah (or Hezbollah Brigades). In a separate incident, a farmer was shot dead by gunmen in his farm in the city of al-Maqdadiyah, some 110 km northeast of Baghdad, the source said. Also in Diyala, two policemen were wounded by the a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, the source added. The province, which stretches from the eastern edges of Baghdad to the Iraqi-Iranian border, has long been a stronghold for al- Qaida militants and other insurgent groups since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 despite repeated U.S. and Iraqi military operations against them. Violence and sporadic high profile attacks are still common in the Iraqi cities despite the dramatic decrease of violence over the past few years.