Suicide bomber kills 23 near Baghdad
2013-02-04 17:52
Taji - A suicide bomber blew himself up near a group of
anti-al-Qaeda fighters receiving salaries north of Baghdad on Monday, killing
23 people, the second bloody attack to hit Iraq in as many days.
The blast, which officials said also wounded at least 44
people, came after Baghdad raised the salaries of the mostly-Sunni militiamen
in a bid to placate weeks of anti-government demonstrations in
predominantly-Sunni areas of Iraq.
The victims of Monday's attack, however, included both
Shi’ite and Sunni anti-al-Qaeda fighters, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
The attack also comes a day after a co-ordinated assault
on a police headquarters in a disputed city in north Iraq killed 30 people amid
a spike in violence nationwide.
The bomber struck at 11:00 in Taji, a town 25km north of
Baghdad, as the anti-al-Qaeda fighters were collecting their salaries.
At least 23 people were killed, a vast majority of them
militiamen but also three soldiers, according to a security official and a
medical source. Another 44 were wounded, among them eight soldiers.
"It's a very awful and ugly attack," Raad
Faisal Abbas, the town mayor, told AFP from the local hospital.
"The victims are all young men, just trying to do a
good job for their country."
One of the wounded, Ali Khalaf, said many of the victims died
because security forces did not immediately approach the scene as they were
afraid of a second explosion.
"I blame the army," said the fighter, who
suffered burns all over his body.
"Normally, when we go [to collect our salaries], the
army lets us enter the compound. This time, they left us outside and they
blocked the entrance," he said.
"In the meantime, when we were gathering, the attack
happened."
Soldiers blocked off access to the site of the attack,
and barred journalists from getting to the scene.
Members of the Sahwa, otherwise known as the Awakening
Councils or Sons of Iraq, are made up of a collection of Sunni tribal militias
that sided with the US military against al-Qaeda from late-2006 onwards,
helping turn the tide of Iraq's bloody insurgency.
Sahwa fighters are often targeted by Sunni militants
linked to al-Qaeda who regard them as traitors.
Violence was also reported on Monday in Baghdad and in
the ethnically-mixed northern city of Kirkuk.
In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a police officer and
wounded three of his colleagues, while four people were shot dead overnight in
Kirkuk, officials said.
The latest unrest came a day after a co-ordinated attack
on Kirkuk's police headquarters - a suicide car bomb followed by an assault by
grenade-throwing gunmen - killed 30 people and wounded 88 others.
The violence comes as Iraq grapples with a political
crisis pitting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki against his government partners
amid weeks of protests calling for him to resign.
No one has claimed responsibility for the spate of
attacks but local security officials blame al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq,
which often targets security forces and officials in a bid to destabilise the
country and push it back towards the sectarian bloodshed of 2005 to 2008.
Kirkuk, located 240km north of Baghdad, lies at the heart
of a swathe of disputed territory claimed by both the central government and
Iraq's autonomous northern Kurdish region.
The unresolved row is persistently cited by diplomats and
officials as the biggest threat to Iraq's long-term stability.
The violence was the latest in a spike in unrest that saw
246 people killed last month, the most since September 2012, according to an
AFP tally.
