Woman caught placing bomb at primary school

Baghdad - A guard caught a woman planting a bomb next to a primary school in Iraq on Monday, while attacks elsewhere killed six security forces members, officials said.

The woman was trying to place the bomb next to the wall of a school in Madain, south of Baghdad, but was discovered by one of the school's guards, who turned her over to the army with the help of a second guard, an interior ministry official said.

The attempted bombing came a day after suicide bombers attacked a primary school and a nearby police station in northern Iraq, killing 18 people, including 10 children.

A total of 36 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Sunday.

North of the capital, two roadside bombs killed four Sahwa anti-Qaeda fighters and wounded five on Monday.

The Sahwa, who joined forces with the United States from late 2006 and helped bring about a sharp reduction in violence in Iraq, are frequently targeted by Sunni militants, who consider them to be traitors.

And south of the city of Fallujah, which is located west of Baghdad, a bombing against an army patrol followed by an attack by gunmen on a checkpoint killed two soldiers and wounded six.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level unseen since 2008, amid persistent fears of a relapse into the kind of intense Sunni-Shi'ite bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people.

With the latest violence, more than 170 people have been killed so far this month, and over 4 850 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.