Seven killed, 27 injured in violence in restive Iraqi province

Jul 1, 2008, 10:25 GMT

Bagdad - A fresh outbreak of violence left at least seven people dead and 27 injured, including three children, in separate attacks in Iraq's restive province of Diyala, police said Tuesday.

In Baquba, the capital of Diyala, twin attacks targeting members of tribal police, known as the Awakening Councils, left three of them dead and eight people injured.

The Awakening Councils are US-backed Sunni tribal police units formed to fight al-Qaeda militants in Iraq.

In the first incident, gunmen attacked a centre of the Awakening Council in al-Abara village, south of Baquba, killing a council member and injuring another, security sources told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

In the second attack, an explosive device was detonated, killing two more members of the Awakening Council who were mourning the council member who died earlier.

Seven people were injured in the blast, including three children, a policeman and three tribal volunteers, according to the same security sources.

Also in Baquba, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, a policeman was killed and 18 people were injured when a car bomb went off, targeting a security checkpoint north-east of the city, VOI reported quoting local police sources.

Separately, three members of the same family died and another was wounded in southern Baquba in a bomb blast near their house.

Diyala, a mixed Sunni-Shiite province, has been the scene of deadly attacks which the US and Iraqi military blame on Sunni extremist insurgents hiding in swathes of farmland and tracts of empty grassland in the province.