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WORLD / Middle East

Suicide blast kills 26 in Iraqi village

(AP)
Updated: 2007-07-07 07:06

BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber struck outside a cafe in a tiny Kurdish
village near the Iranian border Friday, killing 26 people in a remote
part of a province where U.S. forces are waging an offensive against
Sunni insurgents, police said.

The blast ripped through the coffee shop near a market of Iranian goods
in the village of Ahmad Maref, 87 miles northeast of Baghdad, said an
official at the joint security coordination committee of Diyala province.
At least 33 people were wounded, said the official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the
media.

The village is home to about 30 Kurdish families who had been expelled
under Saddam Hussein's rule and returned after his fall. Many Kurds in
the area are Shiite Muslims.

The village lies in the remote end of Diyala, a province where U.S.
forces have been waging two offensives since mid-June, one focusing on
Baqouba, Diyala's capital northeast of Baghdad, the other on Salman Pak,
a region southeast of the capital. The sweeps aim to close off an escape
route for insurgents fleeing a security crackdown in Baghdad and to
uproot al-Qaida militants and other fighters who use the region as a
staging ground for attacks in the capital.

Although violence appears to have eased somewhat in Baghdad in past
months as U.S. forces stepped up security operations, Diyala has
continued to see heavy attacks.

An alleged al-Qaida militant, meanwhile, was executed for his role in one
of Iraq's first major bombings, an August 2003 blast that killed a Shiite
leader and 84 other people and foreshadowed the four-year insurgency that
followed, a Justice Ministry official said Friday.

Oras Mohammed Abdul-Aziz was hanged Tuesday in Baghdad after being
sentenced to death in October, Ministry Undersecretary Busho Ibrahim told
The Associated Press.

The execution announcement was the first word that a suspect had been
tried in the killing of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack �� a huge car bomb
that went off outside the Shrine of Ali in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's
holiest sites, and killed al-Hakim.

Al-Hakim was the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution
in Iraq and was poised to become a major figure in Iraqi politics
following Saddam's fall. His brother, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, now heads the
group, the largest Shiite party in parliament.

Ibrahim said Abdul-Aziz, from the northern city of Mosul, was affiliated
with al-Qaida in Iraq and confessed to other attacks, including the 2004
killing of Abdel-Zahraa Othman, the president of the Governing Council,
the U.S.-appointed body that ran Iraq following Saddam's ouster.

Also Friday, the military said a U.S. soldier died of wounds sustained in
combat Thursday in western Baghdad. With his death, at least 3,592
members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq
war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure
includes seven military civilians.

A church leader said gunmen waylaid a minibus outside the northern city
of Kirkuk and seized four Christian men. Rt. Rev. Louis Saka, the
Chaldean Catholic archbishop in Kirkuk, said a 21-year-old Christian
woman was on the bus when it was stopped south of the city Thursday but
was released by the captors, who are demanding a $40,000 ransom.

Thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled their homes since the 2003
invasion because of threats by Islamic extremists and criminal gangs.

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