Baghdad bombers kill 14 in attacks on anti-Qaeda group
BAGHDAD (AFP) — Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people including a senior figure from a US-backed Sunni group fighting Al-Qaeda, security officials said.
In other violence in Baghdad, four people were killed when two roadside bombs exploded near university sites, while two people were killed when pair of mortar bombs struck cars at the entrance to sprawling Sadr City neighbourhood the east of the capital, they said.
At least 18 people were injured in the joint suicide attacks which targeted the offices of a Sunni organisation in Saba Abkar, a mixed neighbourhood in northern Baghdad, close to the strongly Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiyah.
There has been a recent spate of suicide attacks in Iraq despite a general drop in violence over the past six months, which the US military says has seen a 62 percent fall in all types of attacks.
Interior and defence ministry officials said one suicide attacker wearing an explosive vest blew himself up at the offices in Saba Abkar, and then nearby a suicide car bomb exploded as the injured were being taken to hospital.
Abu Abed, military commander of the so-called Adhamiyah Awakening, said the head of the group, Colonel Riyadh al-Samarraie, and four guards were killed by the suicide bomber.
An employee at the Sunni Foundation offices said the first suicide bomber got through two checkpoints and detonated his explosive vest as he tried to embrace Samarraie.
Samarraie, a 57-year-old father of five, was in charge of the Adhamiyah Awakening's operations and was responsible for communicating with the US military, which pays the volunteers.
The local Awakening group said in a statement it had imposed a curfew in the district and was restricting vehicle access.
Awakening groups, made up mainly of Sunni former insurgents, have been battling Al-Qaeda in Iraq with the support of the US military for more than a year.
The Islamic Party of Iraq, one of the main Sunni political parties, roundly condemned the killings.
"This criminal act is one of a series of attacks targeting Awakening councils to destabilise the relatively secure situation Baghdad and other provinces have been witnessing recently," it said in a statement.
"The Islamic Party of Iraq calls on the Iraqi government to pay serious attention to the Awakening programme and ensure its members are properly trained so they can do their duty properly."
In other violence on Monday, the University of Technology in eastern Baghdad was targeted in a roadside bombing.
"Three were killed and eight wounded when an IED (improvised explosive device) went off on a street in front of the university," said an interior ministry official.
"Students were among the casualties," he said, without giving further details. Another roadside bomb in the south of Baghdad killed one and wounded four on a street near the University of Baghdad.
Late afternoon, two mortar shells landed on two cars near the entrance to Sadr City, bastion of the Mahdi Army militia of radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, killing two passengers and wounding six, security officials said.
The two cars had been several metres (yards) apart when they were hit by the mortars bombs, which followed one another in quick succession.
On Sunday, a suicide attack in Baghdad that three Iraqi soldiers tried to prevent by flinging themselves on the bomber killed 14 people, while on Wednesday a suicide bomber killed at least four people in Baquba in an attack aimed at an anti-Qaeda patrol.
