A total of seven people were killed on Saturday and six others injured in two violent incidents in Iraq's central province of Salahudin, provincial police sources said.

In one incident, a police patrol found five bodies of shepherds who were kidnapped earlier by unidentified gunmen in the south of the ethnically-mixed city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 90 km east of Salahudin's capital Tikrit, said Col. Mohammed Khalaf from the media office of the provincial police.

The bodies of the victims showed bullet holes in their heads and chests, Khalaf added.

Tuz-Khurmato, largely made up of Turkoman Shiites and sizable Kurdish and Sunni Arab population, has witnessed repeated clashes between Kurds and Shiite militias, as the city and its surrounding areas are part of the disputed areas outside the Kurdistan region, which are claimed by the Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans.

Also in the day, two people were killed and six others injured when a roadside bomb detonated outside a funeral tent in the town of Dujail, some 60 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Ahmed al-Jubouri, the governor of Salahudin Province, had complained of the regrouping of rebel groups in the vast rugged areas in the eastern part of the province.

During the past few months, dozens of Islamic State militants fled their former bases in the key cities of the predominately Sunni Arab province of Salahudin, after the Iraqi forces cleared them from the region during major anti-IS offensives.