Eight people were killed on Monday in Iraq, including a father and son in a suicide car bombing, and five members of the Iraqi security forces, in violence less than two weeks from elections. The suicide car bomber struck an interior ministry detention centre in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, killing a man, his six-year-old son and a policeman, said a police officer and a doctor at the city's hospital. The attack occurred around 12:20 pm (0920 GMT) and left also four people wounded, including two policemen. Ramadi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, was a key insurgent base in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion, but local Sunni tribes have since 2006 sided with the US military. Day-to-day violence has dropped dramatically as Al-Qaeda fighters have been ejected but the city has seen a spate of recent attacks, including three bombings of the provincial governor's building. The violence comes ahead of parliamentary elections on March 7, the second legislative polls since ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein after the invasion. In the restive northern city of Mosul, meanwhile, two Iraqi soldiers were killed when their checkpoint came under fire from unidentified gunmen on Monday morning, police Captain Muwafaq Khadhim said. In a separate incident two policemen were shot dead at around midday while manning a checkpoint near a popular market in central Mosul, Lieutenant Marwan Abdul Karim said. And in Baghdad, higher education ministry official and university professor Thamer Kamil was gunned down while he was in the east Baghdad Al-Canal area, a policeman said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Five civilians were earlier wounded when several mortars hit Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, which is home to several foreign embassies and government departments, an interior ministry official said. 