BAGHDAD: Separate gun attacks in Baghdad and western Iraq on Wednesday left five policemen dead, including two working in the anti-terror department, security and medical officials said.

In the deadliest attack, insurgents attacked a police station near the Syrian border early Wednesday morning and killed three policemen, including a captain, according to police and a medic.

Police killed one of the gunmen who carried out the attack in the town of Al-Qaim, in the mostly Sunni Anbar province west of Baghdad, and wounded another. A third shooter escaped.

“Three police, two policemen and a captain, were killed when several armed men attacked the police station at about 3:00 am (0000 GMT),” said police Captain Mohanned Mukhlif Hamadi.

“The attack was followed by clashes between policemen at the station and the attackers. One of the gunmen was killed and another wounded, but one escaped.”

A medic at Ramadi hospital confirmed that the facility had received the body of one of the gunmen and had treated the one that was hurt.

Anbar province was home to a violent Sunni Arab insurgency in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, one that only abated after Sunni tribes sided with the US military against Al-Qaeda from late 2006 onwards.

In Baghdad, gunmen armed with silenced pistols killed two policemen in the Baghdad Jadidah (new Baghdad) neighbourhood in the capital's east, officials from the ministries of interior and defence said.

The victims were working in the Iraqi police's anti-terror department and were travelling in an unmarked civilian car, the officials said.

Wednesday's violence comes around three weeks after US troops completed their withdrawal from Iraq, leaving security in the country solely in the hands of domestic forces.