A suicide bomber killed the leader of a US-backed Sunni paramilitary group and seven others north of Baghdad on Tuesday, the third attack in as many days in a Sunni area, a police official said.
The bombing hit a market in the town of Buhriz, which was also the scene of an attack on Monday that killed the mayor.
The attack in Buhriz, 60km north of Baghdad, targeted the local leader of the Awakening Council, said Police Major Ghalib al-Kharki, spokesman for police in Diyala Province. The bomber followed the leader, Leith Ahmed, into the market before detonating an explosives belt, al-Kharki said.
Ahmed was killed instantly, he said. Seven others were killed and seven were wounded.
On Monday, an attack killed the mayor of Buhriz and wounded his two sons. The sons were also members of the council, al-Kharki said.
On Sunday, a series of coordinated car bombings killed 19 people in Ramadi, Anbar Provine.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, lawmakers approved the return of a limited number of British troops to Iraq to help protect its southern oil ports.
Iraq’s parliament approved the security agreement with Britain months after the military contingent was forced to pull out because a UN mandate allowing British troops to legally operate in the country expired.
About 100 British troops will return for about a year to provide protection to the oil sites and train Iraqi forces. The deal limits British military operations strictly to naval operations at the port of Umm Qasr, a lawmaker said.
Iraq’s president and two vice presidents still must sign off on the agreement.
In other news, the UN has agreed to investigate the devastating truck bombings that rocked Baghdad in August and any role foreign states may have played, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said yesterday.
Zebari said the UN Security Council would appoint an investigator in response to a call by Iraq for an independent probe into the bombings of two ministries, which killed almost 100 people.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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