A total of 32 people were killed and ten others wounded in separate violent attacks across Iraq on Thursday, security and medical sources said.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, Iraqi security forces carried out an offensive against militant groups near the city of Udheim, some 100 km northeast of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing 14 gunmen believed to be linked to the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant, an al-Qaida breakaway group in Iraq, General Abdul Amir al-Zaiydi, Commander of Dijla Operations Command, told reporters at a news conference.

Zaiydi added that his troops, which are responsible for the security in the provinces of Diyala, Salahudin and Kirkuk, burned five vehicles carrying heavy machine guns, and seized weapons and explosives.

Also in Diyala, the police found a body of a male in his 40s with bullet holes in his head and chest dumped near a small river in southern Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In northern Iraq, five farmers from the Iraqi Shiite Turkoman minority were shot dead by gunmen in the south of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, a police source said.

The attack against the minority is the second in two days as militants on Wednesday killed five minority members and wounded 11 others when they blew up 11 bombs at houses of Shiite Turkomans in the city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 220 km north of Baghdad.

The Shiite Turkomans who mainly live in disputed areas claimed by the Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans, often complained that militant groups attack minority members in attempt to displace them from homes. The Kurds want to incorporate the areas on the edge of their Kurdistan region, but their move is fiercely opposed by Baghdad government.

In a separate incident, a police officer was shot dead when gunmen broke into his house in the town of Hamam al-Alil, some 25 km south of Mosul, the police source added.

Elsewhere, gunmen stormed a security checkpoint controlled by members of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group in north of the city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, killing a group member and kidnapping another, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In Anbar province, a security force carried out an operation at the edge of the militants-seized city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, killing a leader of a militant group and a sniper, a provincial police source said.

Separately, an army force clashed with militant groups near a military camp in east of Fallujah, killing seven gunmen, the source said.

Meanwhile, a civilian was killed and 10 others wounded by airstrikes, artillery and mortar shelling on several neighborhoods in the besieged city of Fallujah, a medical source from the city hospital told Xinhua.

The hospital compound itself was hit by the airstrikes which damaged parts of the its buildings, the source said.

Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December last year.

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