Baghdad, JUly 19: One Iraqi soldier was killed and six people were wounded in twin bomb attacks in Abu Ghraib, just west of the Iraqi capital, police said on Sunday.
The soldier died when a roadside bomb planted near a police checkpoint exploded. A second soldier and two policemen were wounded in the blast, police told the German Press Agency dpa.
Three other people were injured when a car bomb exploded in an outdoor market in Abu Ghraib, which lies 20 kilometres to the west of Baghdad, police said.
Sunday’s attacks came amid renewed fighting between insurgents and those working with the government security forces in Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland to the west of Baghdad.
On Saturday, Sheikh Naim Salih al-Halubsi, the leader of the local Sahwa (“Awakening”) Council, was wounded when a bomb exploded as he passed through the Karama district of Faluja, medics in Faluja said.
Three of his bodyguards, including his son, were killed in the attack, police told dpa.
Faluja, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, was the site of some of the worst fighting between Sunni insurgents and US and Iraqi forces until the government enticed armed groups to switch sides and form Sahwa Councils to maintain security with promises of weapons, training and money last year.
Since then, the city has been relatively quiet, though a series of recent attacks targeting those who work with the government have raised concerns that insurgents may be regrouping in the area.
On Friday, a bomb planted outside the home of a high-ranking police officer and former Sahwa leader killed his two young sons and wounded 11 other people, police said. That same day, a bomb planted in a football field killed one person and injured nine others.
On Tuesday, police arrested three men on suspicion of kidnapping and torturing to death the 11-year-old son of a police officer in Saqlawiya, 12 kilometres north of Faluja.
—–Agencies