Iraqi security forces began moving back into a northern town on Friday after gunmen who seized it withdrew, as the death toll from four days of violence reached 190, officials said.

The gunmen pulled out of Sulaiman Bek under a deal worked out by tribal leaders and government officials, local official Shalal Abdul Baban and municipal council deputy chief Ahmed Aziz said.

They had swarmed into the predominantly Sunni Turkmen town on Wednesday after deadly clashes with the security forces, who pulled back as residents fled.

Abdul Baban said that helicopter fire wounded six people on the roof of a house in the town early on Friday.

The gunmen's seizure of the town came amid a surge of violence which began on Tuesday when security forces moved in against anti-government protesters near the Sunni Arab northern town of Hawijah.

The operation sparked clashes that left 53 people dead.

Dozens more were killed in subsequent unrest, much but not all of it linked to Tuesday's clashes, bringing the death toll to 190 by Friday.

The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago.

The protesters have called for the resignation of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, and railed against authorities for allegedly targeting their community.

Army Staff General Ali Ghaidan Majeed told AFP on Thursday that the gunmen in Sulaiman Bek had been given 48 hours to withdraw or face attack.

Majeed said at the time that intelligence information indicated there were about 175 gunmen in the town -- 25 allegedly from Al-Qaeda, and 150 from the Naqshbandiya Army, another Sunni militant group.

Seven gunmen died carrying out three separate attacks on security forces south of the northern city of Kirkuk on Friday, a high-ranking army officer and a medical source said.

Gunmen also killed a soldier and wounded two police in an attack on a checkpoint in Al-Sharqat, north of the capital, late on Thursday, a police colonel and a doctor said.

And three hours of fighting in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killed three federal police and wounded six late on Thursday, police Lieutenant colonel Yasir Hamid al-Jumaili and a doctor said.

The clashes saw gunmen take control of three checkpoints on the outskirts of the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab city after they were abandoned by federal police, Jumaili said.

They then turned the checkpoints over to local police, who returned them to federal police on Friday, he said.

On Wednesday, Abdulghafur al-Samarraie and Saleh al-Haidari, leading clerics who respectively head the Sunni and Shiite religious endowments, held a joint news conference in which they warned against sectarian strife and called for top politicians to meet at a Baghdad mosque on Friday.

The meeting at the Umm al-Qura mosque was scheduled for 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) on Friday, but it was not clear who would attend.

Maliki himself warned of a return to "sectarian civil war" in remarks broadcast on state television on Thursday.

Iraq bloodshed stokes fears of sectarian conflict
Baghdad (AFP) April 25, 2013 - Three days of violence, much of it between Iraqi security forces, Sunni Arab protesters and their supporters, killed more than 170 people and raised fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict.

The trouble began on Tuesday when security forces moved into an area near the northern town of Hawijah where Sunnis had been holding protests since January, sparking clashes in which 53 people died.

The fighting sparked a string of revenge attacks that hit five different Sunni-majority provinces and, along with some violence that is apparently unrelated, brought the toll by Thursday to more than 170 dead.

The protest-related unrest is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that erupted in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago.

The Sunni protesters have called for the resignation of Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and railed against authorities for allegedly targeting their community, including with what they say are wrongful detentions and anti-terrorism charges.

Maliki called for people "to take the initiative, and not be silent about those who want to take the country back to sectarian civil war," in remarks broadcast on state television.

Former national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie meanwhile said that "this is the deepest and most dangerous crisis... since 1921," referring to the year the state of Iraq was established.

Rubaie warned that the current situation "could lead to a sectarian conflict, and then division."

Sectarian violence, including bombings and death squad murders that peaked in 2006 and 2007, claimed tens of thousands of lives. The security situation has since improved markedly, but sectarian tensions remain.

Hamed al-Juburi, a spokesman for the Hawijah protesters, vowed revenge on Thursday for the "massacre" near the town.

Protesters have pledged their loyalty to a Sunni militant group called the Naqshbandiya Army "so we can be an armed wing related to it, working on cleaning Iraq from Safavid militias," he said, using a pejorative term for Shiites.

On Wednesday, Abdulghafur al-Samarraie and Saleh al-Haidari, top clerics who respectively head the Sunni and Shiite religious endowments, held a joint news conference in which they warned against sectarian strife.

Samarraie said there were "malicious plans... with the goal of taking the country towards sectarian conflict", and that he and Haidari agreed "to move quickly to extinguish the strife and stop the conspiracy."

US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters that Washington condemns the violence in Iraq and that "there's no place for sectarian conflict in a democratic state."

An earlier statement from the US embassy said that "US officials have been in contact with senior Iraqi leaders to help defuse political and sectarian tensions."

John Drake, an Iraq specialist with risk consulting firm AKE Group, said the government's ready use of force in recent days highlighted shortcomings in the its response to protests.

"I think the government response indicates that it has a long way to go in terms of its policies for dealing with protest movements in the country," Drake said.

"The use of force so readily, including firearms, at protest camps and the bombing of settlements where militants are believed to be sheltering, is going to bring a very high risk of collateral damage," he said.

"An 'all-out' sectarian conflict is still unlikely," Drake said.

"But the fact that this is a predominantly Shiite government and it's predominantly Shiite security forces opening fire on predominantly Sunni individuals (civilians or militants) is going to have an impact on sectarian relations and could prompt a rise in sectarian violence as a result."