Attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq killed nine people on Monday, officials said, part of a months-long surge in violence that authorities have been unable to stem.
The bloodshed, which has left more than 150 people dead in the past week alone, has forced Baghdad to appeal for international help to combat militancy just months ahead of its first general election in four years.
Officials have also voiced concern over a resurgent Al-Qaeda emboldened by the civil war in neighbouring Syria, which has provided the jihadist network's fighters in Iraq with rear bases to plan operations.
In Monday's deadliest attack, a car bomb targeting a police station in Baghdad's northeastern outskirts killed four police and wounded 10 people, among them three security personnel, security and medical sources said.
And a roadside bomb targeting Sahwa anti-Qaeda militiamen killed one fighter and wounded four others.
From late 2006 onwards, Sunni tribal militias, known as the Sahwa, turned against their co-religionists in Al-Qaeda and sided with the US military, helping to turn the tide of Iraq's insurgency.
But Sunni militants view them as traitors and frequently target them.
Also on Monday, three separate attacks in the capital killed three people, among them a justice ministry employee, while in the northern city of Mosul a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to a civilian car killed its driver in the city's east.
Police also found the body of a woman who was shot the previous night near the restive city of Tikrit.
The government and security forces have insisted that raids and operations across much of western and northern Iraq, areas dominated by the country's Sunni minority, are having an impact.
But diplomats, analysts and human rights groups say the government is not doing enough to address the root causes of the unrest, particularly disquiet among minority Sunnis over alleged mistreatment at the hands of the Shia-led authorities.
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