INSURGENTS KILLED dozens of members of the US-backed Sons of Iraq militia yesterday, striking with a suicide bomb as they queued for their pay outside an army base in Baghdad. At least 45 people died, with dozens injured.
The attack happened at 8am local time at Radwaniya base in the southwest of the capital, where members of the anti-al-Qaeda group were waiting to be paid. Iraqi soldiers were also thought to be among the dead and injured.
The death toll was sharply higher than in past strikes against the Sahwa, or Sons of Iraq, group, but the attack fits a lethal pattern of targeted slayings that have been occurring almost daily in Iraq for the past three months.
Later yesterday a suicide attacker opened fire with a rifle, before detonating a bomb, killing seven people and wounding a further 11 Sons of Iraq members in the western border town of Qaim.
On Saturday, a Sons of Iraq leader and two of his sons were killed by a roadside bomb in the south Baghdad suburb of Dora, while a second regional leader was wounded by an explosion in Baquba, 40 miles north of the capital.
The Sons of Iraq are, in effect, a neighbourhood watch militia raised with US military support in Sunni areas in Iraq from late 2006. They were credited with being a leading factor in the decline of al-Qaeda control across parts of the country such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Baquba, and have been championed as a key pillar of nation-building attempts.
They were each paid $300, initially by the US military under the orders of the then-commanding US general in Iraq, David Petraeus. Their numbers swelled to at least 130,000 by the time responsibility for their welfare and fate was handed over to the Shia majority government of Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
While the Sons of Iraq were seen as central to Petraeus's strategy, they have been viewed as less of an asset by Maliki's government, which has long believed that their ranks remain infiltrated by insurgents and others who participated in sectarian slayings of Shia civilians. – ( Guardianservice)