4 people killed in Iraq's viol

Four people were killed and eight others wounded in separate incidents across Iraq on Saturday, police said.

Two children were killed and two others wounded in an explosion occurred at an ammunition cache at the Multaqa area located southwest of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

There were many rockets and mortar rounds piled at the site by the army of former president Saddam Hussein before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the source said.

The children apparently were playing with the ammunition when the blast took place at the abandoned site, he said.

Also in Kirkuk, a policeman and a civilian were wounded when a roadside bomb struck a police patrol in central the city, the source added.

In Baghdad, a bomb planted in a store in northern Baghdad detonated in the day and killed the store owner, a police source said.

In Diyala province, a gunman was killed when a bomb he was carrying on his bike detonated prematurely and killed him as he was moving in the town of Khan Bani Saad, near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source said.

Two bystanders were also wounded by the blast, the source said.

Elsewhere in the province, Sadiq al-Majmaie, local leader of government-backed paramilitary group in the town of Buhruz near Baquba, escaped a roadside bomb explosion near his car, wounding two of his bodyguards and damaging his car, the source said, adding that Majamaie himself was unhurt.

The paramilitary groups, also named Awakening Council groups, are mostly Sunni anti-U.S. insurgent groups who turned their rifles against al-Qaida after rifts emerged between Sunni Arab community and Qaida as the latter adopted a hardline Islam and exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

Saturday's attacks came a day after gunmen wearing military uniform stormed a village in south of Baghdad on Friday night killing 25 people from three families who have some of their sons as members in the local anti-Qaida group.

Sporadic attacks continue in Iraq about a month after the country held its landmark parliamentary elections which is widely expected to shape the future of the war-torn country.

Source:Xinhua