Baghdad: Gunmen broke into the home of a Sunni anti-al Qaeda fighter in a village north of Baghdad on Monday and killed him and his entire family, a total of six people, Iraqi officials said.
Police officials said the attackers killed the Sunni fighter, his wife, two sons and two daughters with gunshots to the head today evening in the Sunni village of Nibaee, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) miles north of the capital.
The Sunni militia, also known as Sahwa, had joined forces with US troops at the height of Iraq`s sectarian conflict to fight al Qaeda. Ever since then, it has been a target for Sunni insurgents who call its members traitors.
In other violence, a bomb went off near the house of a local municipal official in Abu Ghraib, killing two of his neighbours and wounding four others. Also in Abu Ghraib, one person was killed and five others were wounded when a bomb exploded near the house of a Health Ministry employee.
In a rare attack in the relatively peaceful self-ruled Kurdish region, two senior security officers were wounded when two sticky bombs attached to their cars exploded near Sulaimaniyah city, said police officials.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to media.
Violence has spiked in Iraq following a security deadly crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawijah. According to UN estimates, more than 8,000 people have been killed since the start of the year.
