At least people including a US soldier were killed in violence across Iraq on Saturday. Iraqi insurgents gunned down five soldiers and killed two police in a separate bomb attack on Friday, as government forces stepped up their campaign to regain control of a war-torn country.Captain Mahmud al-Jiburi of the Kirkuk police said gunmen had ambushed an Iraqi army patrol in the town of Hawija, in the north of the country, and killed five of them. “This clash came after police captured 23 insurgents affiliated with Tawhid wal Jihad and Ansar as-Sunna,” he said, referring to two Sunni Muslim extremist groups with ties to Al Qaeda.
Further south in Khalis, 80 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed two Iraqi police and wounded eight people, police said. And in Baquba, a town just north of the capital notorious for sectarian attacks by rival Sunni and Shiite extremists, three bombs detonated in a crowded street market, wounding 10 people.