Iraq checkpoints targeted in wave of attacks

With the western province of Anbar taking most of the hits, militants killed at least 22 members in Iraq on Tuesday, mostly in attacks on police and military checkpoints, said sources.

Sunni Muslim insurgents, including al Qaeda, have regularly attacked security personnel working for the Shi'ite-led government, but no group immediately claimed responsibility for the suicide attacks.

Sources claimed that at least 60 members of the security forces were also wounded in the attacks.

A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives blew himself up near a police checkpoint in the town of Rutba, west of Baghdad, killing at least five. Simultaneously, gunmen launched a series of attacks against police checkpoints in the town killing at least four, police sources said.

Gunmen in vehicles also attacked police and army checkpoints in the west of Ramadi along the main highway that links Baghdad to Jordan and Syria. They killed at least seven, police said, adding that clashes were still continuing.

In a suicide bomb effort, a driver of a tanker truck packed with explosives targeted a police checkpoint in the town of Jurf al-Sakhar, south of Baghdad, police sources said. Four men were killed.

In another incident in Mosul, a suicide bomber driving an explosive packed vehicle detonated the car near a military checkpoint south of the city. The attack killed at least two, confirmed medical sources.

The militants claim to have carried out the attacks in defense of the government pushing aside their minority sect since Saddam Hussein overthrow.

After reaching its peak in 2007, violence in Iraq had eased, At the time, Al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate was forced underground but is now rising again, with more than 7,000 civilians killed this year, based on statistics by Iraq Body Count.

In continued violence on Tuesday, gunmen broke into a house in Mosul and killed two men in front of the family. When they were done with the killings, they blew up the house, police said.

In Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, police cleaned up the scene of three handcuffed and blindfolded men shot execution-style in the head.