Gunmen stormed an Iraqi army checkpoint near northern city of Mosul City on Monday, killing 13 soldiers, local police source said.

"Gunmen attacked checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers outside the Addaiyah village, 80 km south of Mosul around midday, killing 13 soldiers and wounding four others," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The attackers then planted explosive charges in the checkpoint building and blew it up, the source added.

Meanwhile, gunmen shot dead a professor teaching in the college of Arts in Mosul University near his house in northern the city, a source from the city police operation department told Xinhua by telephone.

Earlier in the month, the Iraqi government kicked off a security plan dubbed Operation Imposing Law in the city as a continuation of the security plan launched on Feb. 14 in Baghdad.

The plan included setting up checkpoints in and outside Mosul, raiding gunmen's hideouts and gaining security for the city's hotspots, according to Duraid Kashmoulah, the governor of the city.

Mosul, the capital city of the predominantly Sunni province of Nineveh, is some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital.

(Xinhua News Agency April 17, 2007)