By Xinhua,
Baghdad : At least two anti-Al Qaeda members were killed and eight others injured in a suicide car bomb attack in western Baghdad Saturday, an interior ministry source said.
“The latest reports said that two Awakening Council members of Amriyah neighbourhood were killed and eight others were injured,” the source said on condition of anonymity.
A suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into a checkpoint manned by US and Iraqi-backed council members at about 1.00 p.m. in the Amal al-Shaabi Street in Amriyah, the source said.
The attack targeted a meeting of the local council group in a house in the neighbourhood, killing two members and wounding eight others, the source said.
Earlier, a ministry source put the toll at one killed and three wounded.
Among the wounded group members was Abu Abed, the council’s group leader in Amriyah, who received wounds in his leg, he said.
The US and Iraqi security forces sealed off the area to secure the scene. The Awakening Council are armed groups of local neighbourhoods, including some powerful anti-US Sunni insurgent groups, who fight the Al Qaeda network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shia and Sunni communities.
Amriyah is one of many of Baghdad neighbourhoods surrounded by concrete walls. The walls have reduced insurgent activities, but critics argue that the walls divide communities and widen the sectarian rifts.
Sporadic attacks continue in the Iraqi capital despite the relative lull of violence across the war-torn country, according to the US and Iraqi officials.