BAGHDAD, July 22 (Xinhua) -- A prominent Sunni tribal leader and six other people were killed in separate violent attacks in Iraq on Monday, the police said.
Sheikh Abdullah Sami al-Assi, a chieftain of Obiedi tribe and head of Arab group in Kirkuk provincial council, was shot dead in the afternoon with two of his bodyguards by gunmen who attacked his car near the southern entrance of Kirkuk city, some 250 km north of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
In a separate incident, gunmen broke into a barber shop in central the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, and killed a man by cutting his throat by a knife, said a local police source anonymously.
Elsewhere, gunmen using assault rifles attacked al-Houz police station in northern the city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, sparking a fierce clash between the gunmen and the guards of the police station, a local police source said.
The clash resulted in the killing of one of the attackers and the capture of two others, the source said.
Meanwhile, a magnetic bomb attached to a civilian car detonated in central the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, wounding the driver, a local police source said.
In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group member and his relative were shot dead by gunmen near the provincial city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua.
Also in Diyala, Najat al-Taie, a female provincial council member escaped unharmed a roadside bomb explosion near her car in southern Baquba, but her driver was wounded, the source said.
Iraq is witnessing the worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is sliding the country back toward a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when the monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.
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