KIRKUK (AFP) - Violence in central and northern Iraq killed eight people, four of them troops, on Sunday, security officials said. In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb killed three soldiers in a town south of the ethnically mixed northern oil hub of Kirkuk, police Colonel Ahmed al-Barazanchi said. An IED (improvised explosive device) earlier today hit a dismounted army patrol in Rashad, he said. Three soldiers were killed. Also near Kirkuk in the town of Leylan, a drive-by shooting killed a civilian, Barazanchi said. It was unclear why the victim was targeted. In the city of Mosul further north, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle at a joint police-army checkpoint killing a soldier and wounding four other people, including a soldier and a policeman, police said. While violence has dropped across Iraq since its peak in 2006 and 2007, Mosul remains one of the countrys most unstable cities. Separate drive-by shootings in towns in the central province of Diyala killed two civilians, police Major Firaz al-Dulaimi said. In the capital Baghdad, a magnetic sticky bomb attached to a car killed one person and wounded four in Wathaq Square in the city centre, an interior ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.