BAGHDAD, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-five people were killed and 17 wounded in separate bombings and shootings in central and northern Iraq, the police said on Wednesday.

In northern central Iraq, a clash erupted when gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by fighters of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group in the town of Dijla, 140 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing a Sahwa fighter and wounding two others, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

One of the attackers was also killed and another wounded by the clash, the source said.

In a separate incident, gunmen planted bomb in a house of a policeman in Mkeshiefa area, some 130 km north of Baghdad, and blew them up damaging part of the house and killing a child inside and wounding his mother, the source added.

The policeman himself escaped unharmed as he was not at home when the attack occurred, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua.

Earlier in the day, the police said that as many as 22 people were killed and 13 wounded in bombings and shootings in central and northern Iraq, including 10 from two families at a house in south of Baghdad.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to full- blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.