15 people were killed in Iraq Wednesday, including 12 security force personnel and gunmen.

15 people were killed in Iraq Wednesday, including 12 security force personnel and gunmen.

The attacks were launched in revenge for deadly clashes at a protest near the northern town of Hawijah, which left 27 people dead on Tuesday, AFP quoted officials as saying.

Tuesday’s clashes sparked a wave of revenge attacks which continued on Wednesday, leaving nine security forces members and three gunmen dead.

In the deadliest fighting, gunmen killed five soldiers and wounded five more in the Suleiman Bek, area north of Baghdad, a high-ranking army officer and an administrative official said.

Gunmen also attacked a Sahwa anti-Qaeda militia checkpoint in Khales, northeast of Baghdad, killing four of the militants and wounding a fifth, a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor said.

Moreover, gunmen wounded a policeman in the northern city of Mosul, while a soldier was wounded in another shooting to its south, police and a doctor said.

Three of the gunmen were killed in the Mosul attack.

Three people were also killed in apparently-unrelated violence.

A car bomb against a police patrol killed two police and a civilian and wounded at least seven other people in Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, an interior
ministry official and a medical source said.

And in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, a mortar attack targeting the home of a provincial council member wounded a man and two children, although the
politician was unharmed, a police captain and a doctor said.