IRAQ:Two suicide bombers struck in a Sunni Arab district of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 14, including the leader of a US-backed neighbourhood security patrol, police said.
The strikes were the latest in an apparent accelerated suicide bombing campaign that has been marked by significant attacks nearly every day for the past two weeks, even as overall levels of violence in Iraq have fallen.
The US military blamed al- Qaeda. It said the attacks provided "perhaps the clearest proof of the nature of this enemy that will destroy the very people and neighbourhoods of whom it claims to protect".
Chanting mourners carried the bodies of Col Riyadh al-Samarrai and some of his slain bodyguards through the streets of the mainly Sunni Arab Adhamiya neighbourhood, where the colonel led volunteer patrols in the pay of US forces.
"The martyrdom of the colonel is an inspiration to us now. All of us will become Col Riyadhs," said Abu Firas, another senior member of the "awakening" movement in the area - the Iraqi name for Sunni Arab tribes that have turned against al-Qaeda.
Three separate police and security sources confirmed the death toll and said some 20 people were wounded. Baghdad security spokesman Brig-Gen Qassim Moussawi told Iraqiya state television that six people were killed and 26 wounded.
One of the bombers detonated an explosive vest, the other struck with a car bomb.
Other blasts in Baghdad killed five people, including a bomb hidden in a market cart which killed four in the central Karrada district and a pair of roadside bombs that killed a civilian and wounded two policemen in southern Jadiriya district.
Police said they found five male bodies handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head in Diyala province, and gunmen killed a member of a neighbourhood patrol inside his shop in Samarra.
The neighbourhood volunteers have been targeted in recent weeks by al-Qaeda Sunni militants, who have been driven out of most of the territory they once controlled but have continued to launch suicide bombings.
Before the new year al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who is not thought to have direct control over the Iraqi militants that use his organisation's name, vowed to strike the volunteers, who are funded by US forces.