Baghdad: A roadside bomb killed four
people, including three army soldiers, and wounded 11 people
south of Baghdad on Saturday, Iraqi officials said.
The blast took place near the municipal offices of
the Rashid district just south of the Iraqi capital as
soldiers were responding to an earlier explosion in the same
area.
The first explosion, also caused by a roadside
bomb, did not cause any casualties.
Police and hospital officials said the three
soldiers and a bystander succumbed to their wounds in a
Baghdad hospital. They spoke on condition of anonymity because
they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Meanwhile, a police spokesman in Diyala province
said the head of a five-member family killed yesterday when a
roadside bomb hit the car in which they were traveling was a
local leader of a government-backed Sunni armed group known as
an Awakening Council.
The group's fighters rose up against al-Qaida
militants in late 2006 and 2007, first joining the US military
in its fight against the terror network and later working with
the Shiite-led Iraqi government.
The police spokesman, Maj Ghalib al-Karkhi, had
earlier said that the family was not the intended target of
the bombing, which struck near the town of Buhriz, 35 miles
(60 kilometers) north of Baghdad. The man, his wife and three
children -- two boys and a 4-year-old girl -- were killed in
the attack.
Members and leaders of Awakening Councils have been
frequent targets of assassinations and bombings blamed on
al Qaeda.
Violence has dramatically dropped in Iraq since
2008, but insurgent attacks remain a daily occurrence at a
time when US forces are withdrawing, leaving the country's
nascent forces alone in charge of security.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, July 31, 2010, 18:48