Iraq attacks kill five, including anti-Qaeda leader’s son

AFP, Fallujah, Iraq

Five people were killed, including the son of a senior Sunni Arab militiaman, in two attacks on Saturday in a town outside Fallujah, west of Baghdad, a police officer said. A roadside bomb in Al-Karma, 15 kilometres (10 miles) east of Fallujah, killed three people and wounded six, police Colonel Hafiz Muklif said.
Those killed were the son of Naeem Saleh al-Halbusi, the deputy chief of a Sunni militia opposed to Al-Qaeda, and two bodyguards, Muklif said. Halbusi was injured in the attack.
Sunni militias, made up of local tribes and former insurgents and known as the Sahwa or Awakening, have by siding with the American military since 2006 played a crucial role in ousting the Islamists of Al-Qaeda from their former strongholds.
A second roadside bomb in the town killed two people and wounded two, the police officer said.
The security situation in Fallujah-once a major bastion of the Sunni insurgency-has improved dramatically since the launch of the Sahwa movement.
But Saturday's attacks follow a bombing a day earlier at the Fallujah home of a police lieutenant colonel and ex-Sahwa leader in which his two sons were killed and six people wounded.
The attacks come less than three weeks after US troops withdrew from urban centres in line with a security pact between Baghdad and Washington that calls for American forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
Violence had dropped markedly throughout the country in recent months but attacks increased in the run-up to the US military pullback, with 437 Iraqis killed in June-the highest death toll in 11 months.