Deadly attacks launched across Iraqi cities

A series of attacks in Iraq, including a shooting at a security checkpoint and a suicide car bomb, killed 16 people and destroyed a bridge on Sunday.

At least three people were killed and five others wounded following a suicide attack in Ramadi, a city west of Baghdad, reported Al Arabiya News Channel’s correspondent.

The victims were killed after a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives on the Hauz Bridge, a major crossing used by civilians connecting the north and south of the city.

Ramadi originally had five bridges across the Euphrates River before a militant surge earlier this year.

But two are used exclusively by security forces, and two others -- including the Hauz Bridge -- have been damaged to the point they can no longer be used.

Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, a predominantly Sunni desert region in west Iraq that shares a border with Syria.

Elsewhere on Sunday, two police officers were killed by a roadside bomb that exploded near their car in Tikrit north of Baghdad. Like Ramadi, Tikrit's population is made up mostly of Sunni Arabs.

The attacks came just hours after militants killed seven soldiers at an army checkpoint overnight near the restive northern city of Mosul, Al Arabiya’s correspondent added.

Also, a bomb explosion at the entrance of an out-door market killed four shoppers and wounded nine others in Baghdad's southern suburb of Youssifiyah, police were quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

(With AFP and the Associated Press)