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Two killed, 49 suspects arrested in Iraq

26 July 2011 18:07 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Two people were killed and four wounded in separate attacks in Iraq on Tuesday, while the Iraqi security forces arrested 49 suspects in the provinces of Salahudin and Kirkuk in north of Baghdad, the police said, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

In Diyala, gunmen blew up bombs planted around the house of Ali Hussein, mayor of al-Ghuwair village near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, killing Hussein and wounding his wife and sister, a source from Diyala’s operations command told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In Iraq’s northern province of Kirkuk, gunmen shot dead a Sunni paramilitary group member, known as Awakening Council group, and wounded his daughter in southern the provincial capital city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, a local police told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The Awakening Council group, or al-Sahwa in Arabic, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned to cooperate with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces to fight against al-Qaida network in the past years after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim communities.

Also in the city, a roadside bomb struck a police patrol in northern Kirkuk, damaging a police vehicle and wounding a policeman aboard, the source said.

In addition, the Iraqi security forces conducted search operations across Kirkuk province and arrested ten suspects, including three wanted individuals, the source added.

Elsewhere, the Iraqi police forces carried out search operations in dozens of villages scattered in the volatile area of al-Sherqat, some 120 km north of Tikrit the capital city of Salahudin province, arresting 39 suspects wanted for charges of terrorism, a source from the provincial operations command told Xinhua.

Salahudin province, located in northern central Iraq, is a mainly Sunni province. Its capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, is the hometown of the former President Saddam Hussein.

Violence has dramatically plummeted since its peak in 2006-2007 when sectarian fighting almost plunged the country into civil war, but daily violence and sporadic high-profile attacks still common in the country.