BAGHDAD: A spate of shootings and bombings targeting Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad yesterday killed at least 10 people, while a prisoner on death row escaped from police custody south of the capital.

The attacks, which killed five policemen and three anti-Qaeda militiamen and left more than 20 people wounded, came after Iraqi police were targeted on Sunday night.

Yesterday’s heaviest toll came in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad.

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the town center, killing two policemen and wounding two more before fleeing the scene, a security official said. A doctor confirmed the toll.

Also in Tuz Khurmatu, a car bomb at one of the main entrances to the town killed a policeman and wounded six other people — five civilians and a policeman, the officials said.

In another gun attack, militants broke into the home of two brothers, both of them anti-Qaeda militiamen, in the desert region west of the city of Samarra, which lies around 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of Baghdad.

They killed them and their father, a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor in Samarra’s main hospital said.

The brothers were members of the Sahwa (Awakening) militia, comprised of Sunni Arab tribesmen who sided with the US military against Al-Qaeda from late 2006, helping to turn the tide of Iraq’s insurgency.

In Baghdad, a shooting at an army checkpoint in the south of the city wounded three soldiers, an interior ministry official said. A medical source said one of the three died.

The attacks came just hours after two bombings late on Sunday near the restive cities of Baquba and Mosul killed a policeman and wounded four other people, security and medical officials said.

Also yesterday, a prisoner, who was on death row in the city of Kut, escaped from a police cell in the nearby town of Sheikh Saad, where he was being held ahead of a court hearing, the town’s mayor said.