33 wounded in bomb, gunfire attacks in Iraq-Iraqi village killers 'posed as US soldiers'

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Iraqi officials have blamed Al-Qaeda for the killings


Thirty-three people were wounded in separate bomb and gunfire attacks in Iraq's volatile province of Diyala and Baghdad, the police said on Sunday.

In Diyala, 13 people were wounded, three of them in critical condition, when a motorcycle packed with explosives detonated in the morning near a crowded marketplace in the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blast destroyed several shops and many stalls, along with damaging four civilian cars, the source said.

Also in the province, a police force mistakenly traded fire with members of government-backed Awakening Council group at a village near the town of Maqdadiyah, some 40 km northeast of Baquba, wounding four local members and three policemen, the source added.

The gunfire erupted when the police force stormed the village which was guarded by the local group members who fired back thinking the attackers were only a death squad, he said.

The local group members apparently were haunted by the massacre that took place the day before in the village of Sufiya in south of Baghdad when gunmen wearing military uniform and vehicles stormed three houses in the village and killed 25 people, including five women.

Some of the 25 victims were members of local Awakening Council group which fought the al-Qaida militant groups in the Sunni areas.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb went off in the morning near a police patrol in the Utaifiyah neighborhood in central Baghdad, wounding five policemen and four civilians, along with damaging a police vehicle, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua without giving his name.

In separate incident, a bomb attached to the car of a policeman detonated in the morning in Baghdad southern district of Doura, wounding the policeman in the car, the source said.

Later, in the same district, another bomb attached to a KIA minibus exploded and wounded the driver, the source added.

Meanwhile, two people were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a secondary school in the al-Qahira neighborhood in northern Baghdad, he said.

In addition, the Iraqi capital was also the scene of mortar attacks when two mortar rounds landed on the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses government ministries and foreign embassies in central Baghdad, the source said without giving details about casualties, but he said that plumes of smoke could be seen rising above the vast area on the west side of the Tigris River.

Sporadic attacks continue in Iraq about a month after the country held its landmark parliamentary elections which is widely expected to shape the future of the war-torn country.

The gunmen who massacred 25 people from Iraqi families linked to an anti-Qaeda militia posed as American soldiers in a bid to reassure villagers before shooting them, a security spokesman said Sunday.

Twenty-five men have been arrested in connection with the rampage in the village of Sufia on the southern outskirts of Baghdad that began just before midnight Friday and continued for at least two hours.

Iraqi officials have blamed Al-Qaeda for the killings.

"They wore American military uniforms, two or three of them spoke English, to give the impression that they were American forces," said Major General Qassim Atta, the spokesman for the Iraqi security forces' Baghdad operations.

Atta added that they carried weapons bearing laser pointers, a familiar sight among US troops in Iraq.

A medical official at Al-Yarmuk hospital in west Baghdad who had seen police reports of the violence confirmed that some of the killers wore clothing similar to US military uniforms.

Five women were among the 25 killed, all linked to the Sahwa (Awakening) movement, known as the "Sons of Iraq" by the US army, which joined American and Iraqi forces in 2006 and 2007 to fight against Al-Qaeda and its supporters, leading to a dramatic fall in violence across the country.

The victims were all tied up and shot either in the head or in the chest. Seven other civilians discovered handcuffed in the village were freed.

Atta said that 25 people have been arrested in connection with the attacks, the worst against anti-Qaeda fighters since at least November 16 when 13 members of a tribe opposed to the jihadists were murdered west of Baghdad.

"Several of them confessed, and we are sure they are Al-Qaeda terrorists," Atta said.

The brutal killings come as Iraq's political parties negotiate to form a government, nearly a month after a general election.

Security officials have warned that a protracted period of coalition building could give insurgents an opportunity to further destabilise Iraq.