At least 22 people were killed and 61 others wounded in the latest violent attacks across Iraq on Wednesday, the police said.

Unidentified gunmen on Wednesday evening stormed the house of a local police officer combating major crimes in the city of Tikrit, 170 km north of Baghdad, and shot him dead, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The gunmen then detonated a car bomb near his house, killing eight people and wounding 55 others, the source said, adding that the blast destroyed the police officer's house and damaged a large number of neighboring houses.

Meanwhile, an explosives expert was killed and a policeman seriously injured while they were trying to defuse a car bomb in central Tikrit, the source said.

In northern Iraq, a booby-trapped car struck a police patrol in western Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, killing four policemen and two passers-by and wounding another policeman, another local police source told Xinhua earlier.

Also in Mosul, a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in the southern part of the city, killing a girl at the scene and wounding three policemen, the source added.

Elsewhere, three policemen were killed and a fourth was wounded in a roadside bomb close to their patrol near the city of Duluiyah, some 90 km north of Baghdad, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua.

On Wednesday morning, two civilians were killed in separate attacks by gunmen near Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, the source said.

In addition, police explosive experts defused a car bomb loaded with about 200 kg of explosives on a main road used by security forces near a town of Bani Saad, some 20 km south of Baquba, the source added.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, which raised fears that the country is sliding back to a full- blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000. 

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