Eleven people were killed and 18 others wounded in separate violent attacks across Iraq on Monday, police said.

In Iraq's western province of Anbar, border police guards backed by an Iraqi army force clashed with gunmen who crossed the border from Syria and tried to attack an outpost on the Iraqi- Syrian border near the city of Qaim, some 330 km northwest of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing seven gunmen, including two suicide bombers, a border police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Also in Anbar, gunmen blew up bombs in four bridges passing over a highway near the city of Rutba, some 370 km west of Baghdad, and destroyed parts of the bridges without causing human casualties, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua.

Insurgent attacks continue in the volatile Sunni Arab area in west of Baghdad that stretches through Anbar province to Iraq's western borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

In Baghdad, a civilian was killed and two were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in New Baghdad district in the southeastern part of the capital, a local police source said.

In the Iraqi northern province of Nineveh, 14 policemen, including two officers, were wounded when three roadside bombs went off coordinately near the convoy of Brigadier General Khalid al-Hamdani, police chief of the province, a provincial police source told Xinhua.

Hamdani himself escaped unhurt, but several vehicles of his convoy were damaged by the blasts, the source said.

Elsewhere, Arif Jabbar al-Dulaimi, mayor of Salahudin's provincial capital city of Tikrit and his driver were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in the northern part of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, a provincial police source said.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a tribal leader and his son were killed when gunmen attacked his house at a village near the city of Edheim, some 60 km north of the provincial city of Baquba, which is about 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua.

In a separate incident, gunmen shot dead a lawyer while he was driving his car in the city of Maqdadiyah, some 40 km northeast of Baquba, the source said.







Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, almost 7, 000 Iraqis were killed and over 16,000 others injured from January to October this year.