M. Continuo

Bombs in Iraq kill 11 - police



    By Fadhil al-Badrani

    FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - At least 11 people were killed and dozens wounded by bomb blasts in Iraq on Friday, as the country ramped up its fight against al Qaeda, police said.

    Seven members of one family were killed in one blast in Khalidiya, a town in Iraq's turbulent western province of Anbar about 83 km (50 miles) west of Baghdad.

    Militants simultaneously detonated six roadside bombs in Khalidiya planted outside houses, including the homes of law enforcement officials.

    A policeman was killed when security forces were trying to defuse two more bombs found in the same area.

    "At four in the morning, I heard a movement behind my house and found some barrels nearby, so I took my family out of the house," said Fadhil Salih, a judge at the Khalidiya courthouse.

    "An hour later the bomb went off and destroyed by house, but thank God there were no casualties in my family," Salih said, adding that he survived another bomb attack in the past months.

    At least 10 people were wounded in the blasts, including two police.

    Authorities imposed a ban on vehicles and motorbikes in Khalidiya after the blasts.

    The mainly Sunni province of Anbar has been relatively quiet since tribal leaders in 2006 started turning on Sunni Islamist groups such as al Qaeda who had once dominated it, but insurgents continue to operate in the vast desert province.

    Separately, three people were killed and 15 others wounded when a car bomb went off near a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad's northwestern neighbourhood of al-Hurriya.

    AL QAEDA IN IRAQ UNDER PRESSURE

    On Sunday, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of its affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, were killed in a raid in a rural area northwest of Baghdad by Iraqi and U.S. forces.

    That strike against al Qaeda's Iraq leadership has been accompanied by a string of smaller battlefield victories in which more than 300 suspected al Qaeda operatives have been arrested and 19 killed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

    Overall violence in Iraq has fallen in the last two years as the sectarian bloodshed that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion faded, but tensions were stoked last month after a national election that produced no clear winner.

    Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's bloc came a close second to a cross-sectarian alliance heavily backed by the once-dominant minority Sunni community.

    But Maliki's allies are attempting to recapture the lead through a recount of votes in Baghdad and through court challenges to winning candidates because of their alleged ties to Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party.

    (Additional reporting by Muhanad Mohammed in Baghdad; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)