A total of four people were killed and five injured on Thursday in two separate gunmen attacks in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a police source said.

In the first attack, two men and a woman were killed and three men wounded when unknown gunmen threw a hand grenade on them in a village in the town of Abu Saida, some 90 km northeast of the capital Baghdad, Raed Eissa from Diyala's police told Xinhua.

The Iraqi police launched an investigation into the incident which was followed by gunfire between unknown gunmen, Eissa said.

Abu Saida and its surrounding villages have witnessed clashes among local tribes in the past few weeks.

In the other incident, gunmen believed to be affiliated with Islamic State (IS) militants opened fire with their machine guns at a security checkpoint in the town of Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of Baghdad, leaving a security member killed and two others wounded, according to Eissa.

Despite repeated military operations in Diyala Province, remnants of IS militants are still hiding in some rugged areas near the border with Iran and in the sprawling areas extending from the western part of the province to the Himreen mountain range north of the provincial capital Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad.

The security situation in Iraq has been dramatically improved since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017.

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