Six killed in Iraq violence

BAGHDAD: Attacks in Iraq killed at least six people including a local council member on Sunday, officials said.

Security forces have in recent weeks carried out some of their biggest operations since the 2011 withdrawal of US forces, but analysts and diplomats have said authorities have not addressed the root causes of the unrest.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has nevertheless vowed to press on with the campaign in a bid to combat Iraq's worst violence since 2008.

Two roadside bombs targeted a bus stop and a supermarket in two separate areas of Baghdad, killing at least four people and wounding 13, most of them government employees.

And the body of a local council member who was kidnapped the day before was found south of Kirkuk, a disputed northern city.

He was shot in the head and his body bore signs of torture. And in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a teacher while he was driving.

Iraq was racked by a bloody Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict that peaked in 2006-2007, when tens of thousands of people were killed and many more forced to abandon their homes under threat of death.