An Iraqi anti-terror officer, his wife and three children have been shot dead by gunmen in north Baghdad, security and medical officials said on Saturday.

The family was murdered on Friday evening, the officials said, taking to 10 the overall death toll from violence in the Iraqi capital a day ago, and 15 in the past two days, a notable increase from what had been a relative calm.

"Gunmen used silenced pistols to kill Captain Mahmud Abid, his wife and his three children yesterday (Friday) evening in their home in Kadhimiyah," a predominantly Shiite Muslim neighbourhood in north Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.

A medical official confirmed the deaths, and added that all three children were less than 10 years old. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

The killings came on the day when three near-simultaneous bomb blasts at a pet market in east Baghdad killed five people, and a day after a bomb attack at a restaurant in the capital's southeast left five others dead.

Violence has diminished in Iraq since its heights in 2006 and 2007, but there are still regular attacks in the country.

In April, 126 Iraqis died in attacks nationwide, compared with 112 in March, the lowest figure since the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Lawyers for fugitive Iraq VP withdraw from case
Baghdad (AFP) May 20, 2012 - Lawyers for Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni who is accused of running a death squad, on Sunday withdrew from the case, on the grounds their appeals had been rejected.

The vice president, last known to be in Turkey, is the subject of an Interpol red notice calling for his arrest but says he fears for his life in Baghdad. He is being tried in absentia on charges he says are politically motivated.

"We decided to withdraw from the case as the appeals commission did not review the appeals we presented to it," Muayad al-Izzi, the head of Hashemi's defence team, told reporters.

The Central Criminal Court of Iraq, which held the fourth hearing on the case on Sunday, responded by appointing two new lawyers to replace those who withdrew.

Hashemi had said in a May 17 statement on his website that he was considering withdrawing his lawyers due to "legal violations."

These included the trial not being transferred to another venue and Hashemi's lawyers not being permitted to meet with accused members of his staff or witnesses individually, the statement said.

Hashemi, one of Iraq's top Sunni Arab officials, was accused in December of running a death squad and, along with his staff and bodyguards, faces around 150 charges.

The accusations were first levelled in December after US troops completed their withdrawal, during a political crisis in which his bloc boycotted cabinet and parliament, accusing Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of monopolising power.

After the initial charges were filed, the vice president fled to the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, whose authorities declined to hand him over to the central government.

They then allowed him to leave on a tour of the region that has taken him to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and now Turkey. Ankara has said it will not extradite him to Iraq.