Bombings hit several towns across Iraq

At least 17 people were killed in a fresh wave of violence across Iraq on Saturday, which included a car bombs and mortar attack on a Shia Muslim village, police and medical sources said.

The deadliest attack took place near the Iraqi city of Baquba, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, where three mortar bombs killed six people, police said.

A woman and a child were among the victims, five of whom belonged to the same family, the police said, adding that the assailants might have been aiming at a nearby police station.

Violence in Iraq climbed back to its highest level in five years in 2013, when nearly 9,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, according to the United Nations.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for any of the latest attacks, but Sunni fighters, some linked to Al-Qaeda, have been regaining momentum in Iraq, emboldened by the conflict in neighboring Syria, where they are also active.

Also on Saturday, a bomb near a grocery market killed two people and wounded seven in the mainly Sunni district of Saydiya in southern Baghdad, police said.

In western Baghdad, a car bomb in a busy street killed three people and wounded 12 in Amriya district, police said.

Two car bombs blew up simultaneously in the disputed northern town of Tuz Khurmato, 100 miles north of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding nine, police and medics said.

In other incidents, two policemen were killed and four wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, police said.

Since late December, members of Iraq's Al-Qaeda branch — known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — have taken over parts of Ramadi, the capital of the largely Sunni province of Anbar. They also control the center of the nearby city of Fallujah. Government forces and allied tribes have been trying to wrest control back from the militants since.

Al Jazeera and wire services