Up to 14 people were killed, including an anti-Qaida leader, in
a twin suicide bombing in a northern Baghdad neighborhood on
Monday, raising fears of a return to violence after a period of a
relative lull in the past months.
One suicide bomber detonated a vest packed with explosives at
the entrance of the office of the Sunni Endowment, a government
agency that looks after Sunni mosques and shrines, at about 11a.m.
(0800 GMT) in Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Adhamiyah, an
Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The second suicide bomber set off a car bomb as a crowd of the
U.S. and Iraqi government-backed Awakening Council group members
and security forces were gathering outside the building to evacuate
the casualties of the first blast, the source said.
Most of the victims were Awakening Council group members, the
source said, adding that Riyadh al-Samaraie, a former police
Colonel and a leader of the Sunni Arab security groups that is
attributed with helping to reduce sectarian bloodshed in the
country over the past six months, was among the dead.
Abu Nadeem, an official in the Sunni office told Xinhua that at
least ten people were killed, including the son-in-law of the
lawmaker Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Accordance Front, a major
Sunni bloc in the Iraqi parliament.
While Tha'ir, a guard in the attacked office, said "I saw about
twenty bodies scattered at the entrance of the office and Colonel
Samarie, his son and six of his guards were among the killed."
Brigadier Qasim Atta al-Moussawi, spokesman of the Baghdad
security plan, said there is some evidences indicate that Qaida in
Iraq network is behind the attack.
Dozens of worried people gathered outside the Nu'man Hospital in
the neighborhood to identify the victims of the attack, while U.S.
troops, Iraqi security forces and the Awakening Council fighters
spread in the neighborhood to secure the area after the attack,
witnesses said.
The U.S. bankrolled Awakening Council groups, like the one led
by Samarrai, have sprung up in former insurgency strongholds in
Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, fighting al-Qaida and providing
security for key infrastructure such as mosques and schools.
The Sunni groups have turned their rifles toward the al-Qaida
network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against
both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities in the war-torn
country.
The attacks against the Awakening groups came after the to
pleader of Qaida Osama Bin Laden released an audiotape at the end
of last year, warning Iraq's Sunni Arabs against joining the
Awakening groups or taking part in the government.
Also in the day, three people were killed and 16 others were
injured when bomb detonated in a stall in a crowded market place
near the University of Technology in eastern Baghdad, the police
said.
In separate incident, two roadside bombs went off coordinately
near a police patrol in the Jadriyah area in Baghdad central
neighborhood of Karradah, wounding two policemen and a civilian,
they said.
In northern Iraq, a huge fire flared at the country's main oil
refinery in the town of Baiji, 200 km north of Baghdad, killing a
worker and wounding 15 others, according to a local police
source.
It was yet to know whether the fire caused by a technical fault
or an act of sabotage, as the police is investigating the
incident.
According to U.S. figures, the violence across Iraq has dropped
to 60 percent over the past six months, but insurgents adamantly
stepped up campaign of suicide bombings to kill large number of
people.
(Xinhua News Agency January 8, 2008)
