At least five people were killed and some 20 others wounded on Saturday in three suicide bomb attacks near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and in Salahudin province, security sources said.

Four people were killed and more than 15 others wounded around noon when a suicide bomber blew his explosive vest at a popular market in the town of Mashahda, some 25 km north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity, adding that many of the killed and wounded were women and children.

The toll could rise as ambulances and civilian vehicles evacuated the victims to different hospitals and medical centers in the town and in Baghdad, the source said.

In Salahudin province, a suicide bomber drove an explosives- laden vehicle into a base of Shiite militiamen who volunteered to fight the Islamic State (IS) militants, and blew it up near the provincial capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, leaving at least one militiaman killed and four others wounded, a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Also in the province, a suicide truck bomber backed by six vehicles carrying IS militants launched an attack at dawn on an air base, known as Camp Speicher in north of Tikrit, but Iraqi security forces repelled the attack, the source said.

The heavy fire of the troops blew up the suicide truck before it could reach its target on the northern edge of the air base and forced the six other vehicles to withdraw from the scene, the source said, without giving further details about casualties.

The security situation began to drastically deteriorate in Iraq since June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and hundreds of IS militants, who took control of the country's northern city of Mosul and later seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.

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