At least six people were killed in continued violence in hotspots in western and northern Iraq on Sunday, police said, according to dpa. Near the western city of Falluja, in Iraq's Sunni heartland to the west of Baghdad, gunmen burst into the home of a member of a government-allied Sunni militia. The militants fatally shot four members of the local Sahwa, or "Awakening" militia, then blew up the house, police said. While Falluja was once the site of some of the worst fighting between Sunni insurgents and US and Iraqi soldiers, the Sahwa militias established a measure of calm there since US and Iraqi forces enticed them to switch sides with guns, money and promises of jobs in the Iraqi Interior Ministry. But the area has seen a spike of violence in recent weeks as insurgents target Iraqi security officers, allied militiamen and others working with the government. To the north, near Mosul, likewise one of the most dangerous areas of the country, gunmen killed a woman and her daughter in the eastern Hay al-Tahrir district of the city, police there told the German Press Agency dpa. Police did not say who the woman was, or why she might have been targeted. Earlier in the day, two insurgents were killed and a third was wounded when a bomb they were carrying in their car exploded, police said. Mosul and its environs are one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse regions of Iraq. They also remain the site of near-daily deadly attacks, despite successive security pushes that Iraqi police say have netted hundreds of insurgents this year.
