Two people were killed and 11 others wounded in separate bombings and shootings in Iraq on Tuesday, police said.

An Iraqi army officer was killed and four soldiers were wounded in the afternoon when a roadside bomb explosion struck their patrol in the town of Madain, some 30 km southeast of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In a separate incident, an army colonel was critically wounded when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated while he was driving in Qahira district in northern Baghdad, the source said.

In northern central Iraq, gunmen shot dead a member of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group while he was driving his car in the town of Siniyah, some 200 km north of Baghdad, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua.

The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-US Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after Sahwa's leaders became dismayed by al- Qaida's brutality and religious zealotry in the country.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb exploded in a vegetable wholesale market in the city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 180 km north of Baghdad, wounding six people, a local police source said.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, almost 6, 000 Iraqis were killed and over 14,000 others injured from January to September this year.