Female bomber injures three tribal volunteers in Iraq (1st Lead)

Jun 29, 2008, 10:03 GMT

Baghdad - At least three tribal policemen were injured Sunday when a female suicide bomber targeted a centre of a tribal police squad in the volatile Diyala province to the north-east of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

The bomber wearing an explosives belt hit the centre of one of the police units known as Awakening Councils in Wajihiyah near Baquba, 45 kilometres north-east of Baghdad, police sources told the Voices of Iraq news agency.

Three tribal policemen were injured in the attack.

At least 16 women have carried out suicide bombings in Diyala, a mixed Sunni-Shiite province, in the past six months, according to figures released by its municipal council.

The last of such attacks was on June 22 when a woman blew herself up near a local government building in the centre of Baquba, killing at least 13 people and injuring 30.

Awakening Councils are US-backed police volunteer units set up by clans in Sunni-dominated areas in Iraq to fight Sunni extremist insurgents in their provinces.

The councils have been partly credited for a recent decrease in violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas but attacks on them have increased.

Meanwhile twin blasts targeting police in restive cities in northern Iraq on Sunday left seven policemen dead and nine people injured, including six civilians, according to security officials.

In the first incident, a car bomb hit a police patrol in Duluiyah in Salahaddin province, killing seven policemen and injuring three, local security sources told the Voices of Iraq VOI news agency.

Three other policemen were injured in the attack.

The car, parked on the side of the road, was detonated when the patrol drove by on its way to secure a main road, the sources said.

In the other blast in Kirkuk, six civilians were injured by a bomb that targeted the car of the city's emergency police chief, VOI cited security sources as saying.

In the northern province of Salahaddin, another hotbed of Sunni insurgency, a mass grave containing 25 bodies, six of them women, was uncovered on Saturday in Samarra, according to police.

The grave was found by accident in the Thirthar area during a joint routine inspection operation by police and members of the local Awakening council west of Samarra, police officer Muthana Shaker said.

Some of the bodies were decomposed. No identity documents were found with the bodies.

The area where the grave was uncovered had been previously under the control of militants from the al-Qaeda in Iraq group.