It is reported that gunmen have killed three high-ranking Iraqi police officers in two separate attacks in Iraq.
Gunmen assassinated a police brigadier and a colonel in the south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
In a separate attack west of Kirkuk, a police colonel was one of two officers killed in an ambush.
A second colonel, who reported the incident, was among three policemen wounded.
Earlier, a US soldier was sentenced to three years in prison for shooting dead an unarmed and wounded Iraqi civilian in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.
Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne was also demoted to the rank of private, ordered to forfeit all pay and handed a dishonourable discharge at a court martial in Baghdad.
He was convicted yesterday of the unpremeditated murder in August of a severely wounded and unarmed Iraqi civilian.
He told the court that he shot the man to 'put him out of his misery'.
