Five policemen were killed and eight people injured in two bomb attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq's Mosul, while security forces thwarted two other suicide bombing attempts in the country's west and north, the police said Thursday.

Three policemen were killed when gunmen attacked their checkpoint in western Mosul overnight, the capital city of Nineveh province, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In separate incident, two policemen were killed and four others were wounded when two roadside bombs exploded successively near a police patrol in Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad before midday, an Interior Ministry source, who declined to say his name, told Xinhua.

Four people were also wounded when the blast damaged several civilian cars nearby, the source added.

Also on Thursday, a would-be suicide bomber tried in the morning to drive his explosive-laden sport utility vehicle (SUV) into a crowded livestock market in the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, a local police source said.

At a checkpoint at the entrance of the market, policemen who saw the SUV suspicious shot dead the driver before he could ignite the explosives, the source said.

In Iraq's western Anbar province, the security forces thwarted another suicide attempt against a Sunni mosque in the town of Khaldiyah, some 80 km west of Baghdad, an anonymous provincial police source told Xinhua.

The incident took place in the morning when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive-vest tried to attack the mosque in the al- Akrad neighborhood in the town, but Iraqi soldiers opened fire at the attacker and killed him before he blew up his explosives, the source said.

Sporadic attacks are still common in Iraq more than three months after the country held its landmark parliamentary election which is widely expected to shape the country's political landscape.