15 killed as Iraq struggles to stem unrest

BAGHDAD: Attacks in Iraq on Thursday killed 15 people as a senior police officer escaped assassination, the latest in a surge of violence nationwide that authorities have failed to stem.

The bloodshed, in which more than 6,000 people have been killed this year, is the worst violence in Iraq since 2008.It comes just months before a general election and has forced Baghdad to appeal for international help in battling militancy.

Although there have been no claims of responsibility for much of the unrest, officials have voiced concern over a resurgent Al-Qaeda emboldened by the civil war raging in neighbouring Syria.

In the restive city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, a car bomb targeting Salaheddin provincial police chief Major General Juma al-Dulaimi killed three civilians and wounded two others, police and medical sources said.

Dulaimi himself escaped unharmed.

And a suicide car bombing at a police checkpoint near Samarra, also in Salaheddin, killed three police including a first lieutenant and wounded three more, according to officials.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting a patrol of Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda-militiamen killed two people, one of them a Sahwa fighter, and two other bombs elsewhere in the capital left four people dead.