At least 11 dead in Iraq attacks

At least 11 people were killed in bomb and gun attacks in Iraq on Tuesday, including three by a device which blew up in a mock coffin during a demonstration, security officials said.

Dozens of people took part in the protest in Khales, 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of Baghdad, to demand stiff penalties for the perpetrators of anti-Shiite attacks in the city, the local security operations command said.

The demonstrators were carrying a mock coffin when a booby-trapped device exploded inside the box, killing three people and wounding seven, an official at the centre told AFP.

Sectarian tensions remain high in Khales, a city which in 2006-2007 was a battleground between Sunni insurgents of Al-Qaeda and Shiite militias.

At the end of May, a car bombing in a Khales marketplace killed 30 people, two months after another 42 people perished in a double bomb attack near a coffeeshop and a restaurant.

In Yusifiyah, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Baghdad, gunmen on Tuesday killed a leader of the Sahwa militia, which has sided with US forces against Al-Qaeda, and four family members in their home, an interior ministry official said.

In the capital itself, two bombs exploded near a petrol station in the central district of Muhandicin, killing two and wounding five others, the capital's police said.

And a man was killed in the western city of Fallujah when a "sticky bomb" attached to his car blew up, a local police official said.

Although overall levels of violence in Iraq have fallen markedly since their peak in 2006 and 2007, deadly attacks against civilians and security forces take place on a daily basis.

Iraq has only a caretaker government more than four months after a general election in which no clear winner emerged.