Iraq attacks kill two policemen, mayor's wife

Baghdad gunmen killed two policemen and a bomber killed a mayor's wife in northern Iraq on Saturday, security officials said.

Baghdad police officer Lieutenant Colonel Ihssan Ali was shot twice in the head while driving his car near central Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.

He said that another policeman driving a vehicle was killed by a gunman with a silencer in the Baladiyat district of Baghdad.

In the city of Baquba north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded at dawn at the home of district mayor Karim Zuhair, wounding him and killing his 47-year-old wife as the couple slept, the city's security headquarters said.

Baquba is the capital of multi-ethnic and multi-faith Diyala province, which together with the provinces of Baghdad and Nineveh in the north remain Iraq's most violent regions.

Political unrest has significantly declined since its peak in 2006-2007, but deadly attacks remain a part of daily life.

According to a preliminary report released on Thursday by the NGO Iraq Body Count, nearly 4,000 civilians were killed in 2010 in acts of violence in Iraq, the lowest annual count since the US-led invasion of 2003.

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