11 people killed in Iraq's violence

BAGHDAD - Eleven people were killed and 21 wounded in separate shootings and bombings in northern and central Iraq, police said on Saturday.

In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a police patrol and blew it up at a village in the south of the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing a policeman and three bystanders at the scene, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Earlier in the day, a police source from Iraq's Salahudin province told Xinhua that three policemen were killed and an officer was wounded by gunmen who opened fire on a police patrol near the city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 90 km east of the provincial capital city of Tikrit.

In a separate incident, gunmen threw a hand grenade on a crowd of people outside a grain silo in central Tikrit, some 170 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding four, the source said.

In downtown Baghdad, a bomb exploded late on Friday night at a popular market in al-Fadhil neighborhood, killing two people and wounding 16, an interior ministry source anonymously told Xinhua.

Violence is still common in Iraq despite a dramatic decrease since its peak in 2006 and 2007, when the country was engulfed in sectarian killings.