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MOSUL, Iraq : Eight people were killed in Iraq, including three Iraqi policemen gunned down in Mosul and a foreign truck driver attacked near Baiji, as three Afghans allegedly on their way to fight in the northern city were arrested in Baghdad.
The policemen, including an officer, were gunned down by assailants aboard a vehicle in the Al-Sukar neighbourhood on Mosul's northern side, said Mohammed Fathi, a local police commander.
He said the attack happened at about 1:00 pm (1000 GMT), and a medic at a city hospital said the men were hit in the head and abdomen.
The attacks come two days after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shiite funeral in the city killing 47 and wounding 81.
Three Afghans were meanwhile arrested in southern Baghdad, said a source at the interior ministry.
"They had no documents on them and spoke no Arabic," said the source, adding that they were later interrogated and it was established that "they were on their way to join rebels in Mosul."
Afghans sometimes slip through Iraq's border with Iran to visit the holy Shiite sites in Karbala and Najaf south of Baghdad.
Mosul has become a hotbed of the insurgency led by Islamic militants and former regime loyalists after the fall in November of the ex-rebel bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
Iraqi authorities blame most of the current violence on foreign fighters, with Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi leading the pack.
South of Mosul, a foreign truck driver, presumed Turkish, was killed by a roadside bomb attack on a convoy carrying supplies for the US military.
The attack happened at about 8:00 am (0500 GMT) as the convoy passed through Makhool, close to the northern oil refinery town of Baiji, 220 kilometres (136 miles) north of Baghdad, killing one of the drivers, said police Lieutenant Colonel Hasan Salah.
"The driver might be Turkish because the truck had Turkish plates," he said.
Except for the die-hard few, most Turkish drivers have stopped venturing out on the treacherous roads linking Baghdad to the northern city of Mosul after a string of kidnappings and gruesome murders in the area over the past year.
Iraqi drivers are doing the job now.
Also in Baiji a dawn mortar attack on an Iraqi army barracks wounded one soldier and destroyed a vehicle, said Captain Hassan Yusif.
In Tikrit, the capital of Salahuddin province which includes Baiji, the local hospital said it received the bullet-riddled bodies of three Iraqi males killed in attacks on Friday.
One of the victims was lifted from the Tigris River Saturday and had his hands tied to his back and was shot in the head, said Doctor Waed al-Tikriti at the city's main hospital.
The motive and circumstances of the killings were unknown. Contractors, interpreters or anyone perceived of working with US and Iraqi forces are often the target of insurgents.
In Samarra, the other principal city in this tense and predominantly Sunni Muslim zone, a pipeline running from Baiji to Baghdad and passing through the area was attacked with a bomb, said Lieutenant Colonel Nayef Hamid.
Flames raged and thick black smoke covered the skies over Samarra.
Commandos from the interior ministry set up checkpoints at the city's main entrances and continued their raids and arrest of suspected foreign and Iraqi fighters.
South of Baghdad, another gruesome discovery was made near the predominantly Shiite city of Hilla when police found the body of a man shot in the head and back, according to a local police chief.
- AFP
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