At least four people have been killed and more than a dozen others wounded in a fresh wave of bombing and mortar attacks in northern Iraq.
A bomb exploded near al-Zab police station in southwestern Kirkuk -- about 250 kilometers north of Baghdad -- on Wednesday morning, wounding one civilian and two policemen, Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported.
A second bomb blast followed in less than an hour in almost the same place, killing three policemen and a member of Sahwa (Awakening) militia and wounding seven more.
In the city of Mosul, a mother and her two children were wounded on Wednesday when a mortar shell hit their house near an army checkpoint in the eastern neighborhood of al-Bekr.
Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, lies 390 kilometers north of the Iraqi capital.
Upon the end of the combat mandate of US forces in Iraq, militants stepped up terror attacks across the war-weary nation, focusing their strikes on Iraqi police forces.
The US-led invasion of 2003 toppled Iraq's notorious dictator Saddam Hussein but also left the country rocking under almost daily bomb explosions.
