[NYTr] Iraq bombs hit US-backed militias

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

BBC - Dec 25, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7159794.stm

Iraq bombs hit US-backed militias

More than 30 people have been killed and scores injured in suicide
bombings in northern Iraq.

A car bomber killed more than 20 people when he was stopped by police
and local militias in Baiji, about 250km (155 miles) north of Baghdad.

Later, a suicide bomber killed 10 people in Baquba, at the funeral of a
father and son who were part of a Sunni group allied to US forces.

A number of Sunni tribal militias have turned against al-Qaeda.

They are credited with pushing back al-Qaeda in areas where they had
been operating with relative freedom. 

US officials say this has helped reduce attacks in Iraq by 60% since
June.

But neighbourhood patrols have increasingly come under attack from
Sunni radicals.

In Baiji, the bomb hit people queuing to buy gas cylinders in a
residential area. Women and children were reported to be among those
killed.

Witnesses said the attack there targeted a security checkpoint on a
road leading to a residential compound housing employees of the
Northern Oil Company.

Calm shattered

Baiji, a mostly Sunni area in Salahuddin province, has been relatively
quiet in the past two years and the presence of the militias could
explain why it is being targeted once more by suicide bombers, says the
BBC's Jo Floto in Baghdad.

At least 19 people were killed and dozens wounded in two car bomb
attacks there in October.

The suicide blasts targeted the town's police chief and a tribal
leader, Thamer Ibrahim Atallah, a senior member of the Salahuddin
Awakening Council.

In Tuesday's attack at the funeral in Baquba, the capital of the
restive Diyala province 60km (35 miles) north of Baghdad, the bomber,
wearing a vest packed with explosives, also wounded 21 members of the
local militia, police said.

Police said the father and son who were being buried had mistakenly
been killed by US troops.

The US military has only said its troops killed two "armed individuals".

© BBC MMVII