Baghdad, Sep 11 (IANS): At least 15 people were killed and eight wounded in separate attacks in Iraq Wednesday, police said.

Four soldiers were killed, including an officer, when gunmen using assault rifles attacked their checkpoint in southeast of Mosul, 400 km from Baghdad, Xinhua reported citing a provincial police source as saying on condition of anonymity.

In a separate incident, a primary school principal was shot dead by gunmen in front of his house in eastern Mosul, the source said.

Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead a civilian at a village in Mosul. Police also found unidentified bodies of two young men with bullet holes in their heads and chests, the source added.

In Diyala province, three policemen were killed and four wounded when gunmen attacked a checkpoint near the town of Buhruz, 65 km northeast of Baghdad, said a police source.

An official of the Sunni endowment office, responsible for running the Sunni mosques, was killed along with his wife in a roadside bomb explosion near their car in the city of Kan'an, the source said.

A child was also killed and four people were wounded when two roadside bombs went off near two houses in Maqdadiyah city.

In southern Iraq, gunmen shot dead a Sunni imam near his mosque in the town of Abu al-Khasib in southeast of the oil-hub city of Basra, 550 km south of Baghdad, an official from the Sunni endowment told reporters.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.