BAGHDAD, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and 20 injured in separate attacks across Iraq on Monday, police and medical sources said.

    Gunmen shot dead an Awakening Council group fighter in a village near the town of Iskandariyah, 35 km south of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

    The pro-government Awakening Councils are powerful former insurgent groups, who fight the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

    Meanwhile, the police said that a mortar round landed on a house in the town of al-Mssyyab, some 70 km south of Baghdad, killing a resident and causing damages to the house.

    Separately, a car bomb parked near a U.S. and Iraqi military base in central of Amara city, 375 km southeast of Baghdad, detonated and wounded 18 people, a medical source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

    The source confirmed that his hospital received 18 wounded people by the car bomb blast, adding that seven of the victims were in critical condition.

    Two suspected militants were wounded when their booby-trapped car apparently detonated prematurely in the al-Mahaweel area, 85 km south of Baghdad, a local police source said.

    The two suspects were trying to park their car near the house of a senior official in the local government of the town, the source said.

    The incidents came as Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker tentatively signed in Baghdad a security pact that would allow U.S. forces to remain in the country for another three years.