Baghdad, Oct 21 (IANS): Nine people were killed and 21 wounded in separate attacks across Iraq, including a suicide bombing, police said.
The deadliest attack occurred Monday morning in Iraq's western province of Anbar when two suicide bombers blew up their explosive vests at the police command of the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of the Iraq's capital Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The suicide bombings were followed by mortar barrage and small arms fire by gunmen on the site, sparking fierce clashes between the guards and the attackers, the source said.
The clashes forced the attackers to go to a nearby building of the electricity department in the central city and take four employees hostage, the source added.
After a few hours of clashes, the Iraqi security forces took control of the building and freed the four after killing two gunmen and arresting three others, he said.
The coordinated attacks in Fallujah prompted the provincial operations command to block all the city entrances and impose indefinite curfew, the source added.
Insurgent attacks continue in the volatile Sunni Arab area west of Baghdad that stretches through Anbar province to Iraq's western borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
In a separate incident, a member of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group was shot dead by a sniper while the group member was manning a checkpoint on a main road in western city of Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua.
Elsewhere, a soldier was critically wounded by a sniper shot at a checkpoint on a highway in west of Salahudin's provincial capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, a provincial police source said.
In addition, gunmen planted four bombs at the house of a leader of a Sahwa group in the town of Siniyah, some 200 km north of Baghdad, and blew them up, wounding five family members, including two women and a child, and destroying part of the house, the source said.
The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-US Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the Al Qaeda network after Sahwa's leaders became dismayed by Al Qaeda's brutality and religious zealotry in the country.