Bike-riding suicide bomber kills 30 Iraqi police

29 Oct 2007 14:17:03 GMT
Source: Reuters

More (Updates death tolls, U.S. military on kidnappings)

By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD, Oct 29 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber on a bicycle killed 30 Iraqi policemen doing their morning exercises at a base north of Baghdad on Monday, in one of the deadliest strikes on security forces in months.

The attack was a reminder that despite a U.S.-led crackdown that has killed hundreds of Shi'ite and Sunni Arab militants and sharply reduced levels of violence in Iraq, groups such as al Qaeda are determined to carry on fighting.

The bomber entered the base in the volatile Diyala province and blew himself up amid members of a rapid reaction force, said Major-General Ghanim al-Quraishi, the Diyala police chief.

A shopkeeper whose store is close to the base told Reuters he had seen a man riding a bicycle slip through a gap in the concrete wall surrounding the compound and heard a huge blast seconds later that threw a cloud of dust into the air.

"I saw many bodies covered in blood. Some were dying, some had arms and legs blown off," said store-owner Ali Shahine.

At least 20 people were wounded in the attack, including a woman and a child, police said. Hospital officials gave the same number of casualties.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but it bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, which has often used suicide bombers to devastating effect in attacks on Iraqi security forces.

The base is in the city of Baquba, capital of Diyala province, a religiously and ethnically mixed region where al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups as well as Shi'ite Muslim militias operate.

U.S. forces on Monday blamed a former commander in Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army for kidnapping a group of Shi'ite and Sunni Arab tribal leaders from Diyala a day earlier. They had been returning home from talks with a representative of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad.

The military pledged to work with the Iraqi government to secure the release of the sheikhs, part of an anti-al Qaeda tribal alliance.

In other violence, a car bomb in a residential area in the northern Iraqi town of Siniya demolished two homes and killed eight people and wounded 13, police said.


(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami in Baghdad)

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Bomber kills 5 local tribal leaders in Iraq 12 minutes ago


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed five Sunni Arab tribal leaders in Iraq's Diyala province on Friday, police said.



They said the bomber blew himself up in a meeting of local tribal leaders from the area. Those killed were members of the Diyala Salvation Council, a body set up to oppose al Qaeda in Iraq in the province.

Police said three people were wounded in the attack in the village of Dojemah, near the town of Khalis. Among those killed were the deputy head of the Diyala Salvation Council, Sheikh Faeiz Lefta al-Obaidi.

After tribal leaders largely drove al Qaeda out of Iraq's Anbar province, formerly a key stronghold of the insurgency, tribal groups opposed to al Qaeda militants have sprung up in other areas of Iraq.

Diyala, a mixed Shi'ite and Sunni province northeast of Baghdad, has been among Iraq's most violent areas in recent months. On Oct 29, a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed 30 Iraqi policeman at a base in Diyala, in the deadliest recent suicide bombing in Iraq.