BAGHDAD, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Fourteen people were killed and 26 wounded in separate bombings and shootings across Iraq on Thursday, police said.
In Salahudin province, gunmen using assault rifles attacked a minibus carrying Iraqi soldiers in Dijla area, in south of the provincial capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, leaving four soldiers killed and three wounded along with wounding the driver, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
In a separate incident, a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group member and his brother were shot dead by gunmen in the city of Samarra, about 40 km south of Tikrit, the source said.
Meanwhile, four soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol in the town of Shirqat, some 110 km north of Tikrit, the source added.
In northern Iraq, a police officer and a policeman were killed and two policemen wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in the town of Shora, about 50 km south of Nineveh's provincial capital of Mosul, which itself located some 400 km north of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua.
Separately, an Iraqi police force foiled twin suicide bombings in the city of Mosul when they opened fire on two suicide bombers who tried to drive their car bombs into the entrance of a military base in southern Mosul, blowing up the two car bombs and killing their drivers, the source added without saying whether the guards sustained any casualty.
A body of a policeman who was kidnapped two days ago was found in southern Mosul with bullet holes in his head and chest, the source said.
Also in Mosul, three policemen were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol in western the city, he said.
Near Baghdad, a civilian was killed and six wounded when a roadside bomb ripped through Baghdad's southeastern suburb of Nahrawan, a police officer in the capital told Xinhua.
In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a government employee was killed and five of his family members, including three children, were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion at his house in the city of Maqdadiyah, some 40 km northeast of the provincial capital city of Baquba, 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source said.
In addition, a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group member was killed and another wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint at a village near Baquba, the source added.
The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.
In western Iraq, a member of Iraqi Special Weapons And Tactics force was wounded when a magnetic bomb attached to his private car detonated while driving in the city of Rutba, some 375 km west of Baghdad, a local police officer told Xinhua.
Earlier in the day, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq said the monthly death toll among Iraqis from violence reached more than 1, 057 in July, marking the highest level in nearly five years.
"We haven't seen such numbers in more than five years, during which the blind rage of sectarian strife that inflicted deep wounds upon this country had finally abated," Gyorgy Busztin, the UN acting envoy in Baghdad, said in a statement.
"I reiterate my urgent call on Iraq's political leaders to take immediate and decisive actions to stop the senseless bloodshed, and to prevent these dark days from returning," Busztin said.
The spike in bloodshed raised fears that Iraq is sliding 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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