One civilian and seven policemen killed in Iraq in spate of attacks

A drive-by shooting and other attacks in Iraq on Sunday killed a civilian and seven policemen, police and interior ministry officials said.

"At 8:30 am (0530 GMT), gunmen riding in a car and carrying automatic weapons killed five policemen guarding a checkpoint, before fleeing," a police officer in the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, said.

He said the gunmen struck in the desert town of Rutbah, on the main highway leading from Baghdad towards Amman and Damascus.

Anbar province was an Al-Qaeda stronghold until 2008 when US commanders began recruiting Sunni Arab tribesmen and former insurgents to form militias which turned the tide against the jihadists.

Another policeman was killed in west Baghdad by a gunman using a silencer, an interior ministry official said. In the main northern city of Mosul, gunmen killed one policeman and wounded a second, police said.

In the northern oil hub of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded another, police said.