In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb killed three soldiers in a town south of the ethnically mixed northern oil hub of Kirkuk, police Colonel Ahmed al-Barazanchi said.

"An IED (improvised explosive device) earlier today hit a dismounted army patrol in Rashad," he said. "Three soldiers were killed."

Also near Kirkuk in the town of Leylan, a drive-by shooting killed a civilian, Barazanchi said. It was unclear why the victim was targeted.

Kirkuk, 240 kilometres (150 miles) north of Baghdad, lies at the heart of an oil-producing province which is at the centre of a dispute between Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds.

In the city of Mosul further north, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle at a joint police-army checkpoint killing a soldier and wounding four other people, including a soldier and a policeman, police said.

Gunmen also killed a shopkeeper in the city centre of Mosul while two other people were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police checkpoint, police said.

While violence has dropped across Iraq since its peak in 2006 and 2007, Mosul remains one of the country's most unstable cities.

Separate drive-by shootings in towns in the confessionally mixed central province of Diyala killed two civilians, police Major Firaz al-Dulaimi said.

In the capital Baghdad, a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to a car killed one person and wounded four in Wathaq Square in the city centre, an interior ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

burs-psr/jac/hkb

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