In Fallujah, west of Baghdad, Captain Ibrahim Khairallah Hamadi died when a bomb attached to his car exploded in his housing complex, police Major Yassin Mohammed told AFP. One of Hamadi’s guards was wounded in the attack.

In Mosul, a Sunni tribal chief was killed and his driver wounded in a similar attack in the centre of the restive northern city, according to a police officer who declined to be identified.

He said six police officers and soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb in western Mosul targeting a joint patrol.

And in eastern Baghdad, one person was killed and four others were wounded by a roadside bomb on Palestine Street.

According to another police officer, gunmen shot dead the brother of a police major outside Baquba, north of the Iraqi capital.

The attacks come less than a month after US troops withdrew from urban centres in line with a security pact between Baghdad and Washington that calls for American forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

Violence had dropped markedly throughout the country in recent months but attacks increased in the run-up to the US military pullback, with 437 Iraqis killed in June — the highest death toll in 11 months.