2 attacks kill 8 people in Iraq, worst attack in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad

BAGHDAD -- Gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint, and mortar rounds struck an outdoor market, killing eight people in Iraq on Monday, police said.

The worst attack occurred in the Diyala province capital of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, when unidentified gunmen in two cars opened fire on a police checkpoint, killing three policemen and two civilians, police said. Two policemen and four civilians were wounded in the 9:30 a.m. attack, which ended when the assailants fled the scene, police said.

On Sunday, five civilians were killed execution style on the streets of Baquoba by gunmen who appeared to be accusing them of collaborating with the U.S.-led coalition.

Elsewhere, three mortar rounds hit an outdoor market on Monday morning in Zafaraniyah, a Shiite section of southeast Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding nine, police said.

In Suwayrah, 25 miles south of the capital, police dragged two unidentified, bullet-riddled bodies of a man and a women in their 40s from the Tigris River, police said. Like many other victims of such killings in Iraq, they were handcuffed with their legs tied together.

At 11:30 p.m. Sunday, gunmen apparently disguised as Iraqi soldiers broke into the house of a Sunni family at the Shiite-dominated al-Wihda district, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing two men and wounding four others, included a 6-year-old child, police said.

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