Baghdad - At least 10 people were killed and 28 injured in fresh violence across Iraq on Wednesday, police told the German Press Agency dpa. In the contested, northern city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb killed journalist Orhan Hajran and injured television journalist Mohammed Abdallah as they returned to their house in the city, police said.
The attack came as lawmakers postponed until Sunday further debate on the country's electoral law over a dispute on voter registration in the city.
Arab and Turkman lawmakers have sought to examine reports of irregularities in the voter-registration rolls. Kurdish lawmakers have agreed to examine the rolls only if similar investigations are made into other districts.
Many Iraqi Kurds hope to make Kirkuk, with its nearby oilfields, the capital of a future independent state. Arab Iraqi politicians, allied with representatives of Kirkuk's sizeable Turkman minority, regard the city and its environs as an integral part of the country.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called the dispute the most serious issue facing Iraq today.
Violence also continued Wednesday near the central Iraqi city of Hilla, some 100 kilometres south of Baghdad.
Two people were killed when a car bomb exploded in an industrial area of Mahawil, not far from Hilla, police there told dpa. At least 12 others were injured in that explosion.
Soon after, at a sheep market in nearby al-Askandariyah, a bomb injured at least 11 people, police said.
Wednesday's bombings followed a bomb attack targeting a police patrol in nearby al-Hamiya the day before. That blast left one police officer killed and three others injured, Baghdad's Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported.
Some 500 kilometres to the north, in Mosul, insurgents continued their campaign against police and government interests on Wednesday.
A four-year-old boy was shot dead by a stray bullet when gunmen attacked a police patrol in the Mosul neighbourhood of al-Rashidiya, police there told dpa. A policeman was also killed in that attack.
Armed men burst into a family home and fatally shot a man and his wife in southern Mosul. Soon after, in the east of the city, gunmen fatally shot a man and his daughter in the district of al-Jazair, police said.
Across town, in the district of al-Mathna, two policemen were killed when gunmen opened fire on their patrol, police said.
Earlier on Wednesday, three policemen were injured when a bomb detonated as their patrol passed through the neighbourhood of al-Kokjali.
Wednesday's violence, the latest in a near-daily series of fatal attacks in and around Mosul, came as Iraqi security forces arrested eight Syrian nationals west of the city for illegally entering the country.
Police told
