BAGHDAD, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Nine people were killed Wednesday in separate gunfire and bomb attacks in northern and western Iraq, the police said.
In Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, gunmen broke into a civilian house from Iraq's Yazidi religious minority in the city of al-Baaj, some 110 km west of the provincial capital city of Mosul, killing two brothers inside, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurd and mostly live near Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad.
In a separate incident, two militants were killed while trying to plant a roadside bomb in the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, the source said.
In addition, gunmen with assault rifles opened fire on a lawyer near his house in Mosul's southwestern district of Palestine, and shot him dead before they fled the scene, the source added.
Also in the province, a policeman was killed when gunmen using silenced weapons attacked his patrol in al-Kornesh district in central Mosul, he said.
In Iraq's western province of Anbar, an Iraqi police force spotted a suspected car bomb in the city of Hit, some 150 km west of Baghdad, and blew it up, killing three bombers aboard, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua.
Violence is still common in the Iraqi cities despite the dramatic decrease since its peak in 2006 and 2007 when the country was engulfed in sectarian killings.