At least eight were killed on Monday in a spate of shootings and bombings targeting Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad.

At least eight were killed on Monday in a spate of shootings and bombings targeting Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad.

The attacks, which killed four policemen and three anti-Qaeda militiamen, came after a deadly bombing targeted Iraqi police on Sunday night.
Monday's heaviest toll came in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometers north of Baghdad.

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the town centre, killing two policemen and wounding two more before fleeing the scene, a security official said. A doctor confirmed the toll.
Also in Tuz Khurmatu, a car bomb at one of the main entrances to the town killed a policeman and wounded six other people -- five civilians and a policeman, the officials said.

In another gun attack, militants broke into the home of two brothers, both of them anti-Qaeda militiamen, in the desert region west of the city of Samarra, which lies around 110 kilometers north of Baghdad.
They killed them and their father at around 4:00 am (0100 GMT), a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor in Samarra's main hospital said.

Another anti-Qaeda militiaman was killed by a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car in the town of Hawijah, 230 kilometres (145 miles) north of Baghdad, security and medical officials said.
In Baghdad, a shooting at an army checkpoint in the south of the city wounded three soldiers, an interior ministry official said. A medical source said one of the three died.

Also on Monday, a prisoner, who was on death row in the city of Kut, escaped from a police cell in the nearby town of Sheikh Saad, where he was being held ahead of a court hearing, the town's mayor said.