BAQUBA, Iraq - Three people including a tribal sheikh and a child were killed in attacks north of the Iraqi capital, the US military and local police said Friday, as insurgents shelled a police station with mortars.
Elsewhere, three Kurds were kidnapped near the northern oil centre of Kirkuk. And in conflict-riven Ramadi, US marines said insurgents dynamited the mayor's office.
Gunmen killed Sheikh Zeid Khalifa Mohsen al-Beni-Waiys late Thursday as he drove through his hometown of Sadyiah, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of Baghdad, said Master Sergeant Robert Powell.
Beni-Waiys served on the local city council set up by US forces, Powell said, adding that the Americans considered him a "moderate".
It was the latest assassination of a local leader after a tribal chief, Hazem Daraa, was gunned down by assailants in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Wednesday night.
Although the attacks could be linked to tribal leaders' ties to the Americans, some of the violence in post-Saddam Iraq is rooted to power struggles among tribal factions, according to military officers.
In Duluiya, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad, an Iraqi was killed and four others wounded in clashes between insurgents and the national guard.
And on the road between Samarra and Tikrit, a child was killed and three others wounded in a roadside bomb, the hospital in the nearby town of Samarra said.
Meanwhile, a police station and the governor's mansion in Bohrouz, just south of Baquba, were hit by small arms and mortar fire early Friday, without causing casualties, Powell said.
Bohrouz, northeast of Baghdad, has been a hub of rebel activity and insurgents overran the city in June before being pushed back.
Three Kurds working for the Kirkuk water and sewerage authority were kidnapped and a fourth wounded while they were travelling back to the city from Baghdad, said an official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party.
They were ambushed by insurgents posing as Iraqi national guardsmen at a checkpoint up near Suleiman Bek, 80 kilometres south of Kirkuk, said Ramadan Rashid.
Anwar Amin, commander of the national guard in Kirkuk, also said insurgents fired at a car bearing a license plate from the main Kurdish town of Arbil, wounding some of the car's occupants, who were from the same family.
And in the trouble spot of Ramadi, 100 kilometres west of Baghdad, marines reported the local mayor's office was dynamited.
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