Eight people, including a candidate for upcoming parliamentary polls, were killed in violence across Iraq Thursday, police said.
In Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, Wathiq Memdouh, a candidate for Mutahidoun political bloc, was shot dead by gunmen while he was driving his car in the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Iraq's capital Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua.
Memdouh, who is also head of relations department in Nineveh's provincial government, was supposed to run in the April 30 parliamentary polls.
In a separate incident, a soldier was killed and two were others injured when a roadside bomb struck their military vehicle in eastern Mosul, the source said.
Four more soldiers were wounded in two roadside bomb attacks on their patrols around Mosul, the source added.
In the country's northern province of Salahudin, dozens of gunmen in the afternoon took control of the town of Siniyah, just west the refinery city of Baiji, after they blew up the town council building and seized the building of the local government, a provincial police source told Xinhua.
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About three hours later, Iraqi security forces rushed to the scene and clashed with the attackers. The soldiers regained control of the town and imposed curfew to conduct a search operation to look for more attackers, the source said.
There was no immediate reports about casualties, but the gunmen abducted two policemen at the government building and seized weapons and ammunition along with six police vehicles, the source added.
Also in Salahudin province, a police officer was killed and his wife wounded when a sticky bomb attached to their car detonated in the provincial capital city of Tikrit, the source added.
In eastern Iraq, Iraqi security forces killed five suspected gunmen during an operation at villages near Diyala's provincial capital city of Baquba, a provincial police source said.
Iraq is witnessing its worst violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.