AFP/Baghdad

Violence in Iraq killed seven people yesterday while security officials said they nabbed a top Al Qaeda militant as they look to stem spiralling violence with wide-ranging operations against insurgents.

Diplomats and analysts say the authorities are failing to tackle the root causes of months of heightened unrest, but Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed to press on with the anti-insurgent campaign, which is among the biggest of its kind since US forces withdrew in December 2011.

Yesterday’s violence struck across the country—in Baghdad and to its north and south—with gun and bomb attacks hitting both Shia and Sunni areas.

In the deadliest incident, gunmen burst into a house in a mostly Shia town north of Baghdad and killed three people.

Violence in Hilla, south of the capital but also predominantly Shia, left two dead.

A half-dozen separate shootings and explosions in the capital Baghdad and Mosul, a mostly Sunni Arab city in north Iraq, killed two people and wounded 12 others.

Meanwhile a joint command centre of military and police in northern Iraq said security forces arrested seven Sunni militants linked to Al Qaeda.

They included the self-styled finance minister of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an Al Qaeda front group, who had reportedly tried to enter Iraq from neighbouring Syria with fake documents.

The command centre did not give further details about the arrests.

Unrest has surged in Iraq this year to levels not seen since 2008, when the country was emerging from a brutal Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict that claimed tens of thousands of lives.