Up to two anti-Qaida members were killed and eight others injured, including a local leader, in a suicide car bomb attack in western Baghdad on Saturday, an Interior Ministry source said.
"The latest reports said that two Awakening Council members of Amriyah neighborhood were killed and eight others were injured," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
A suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden car into a checkpoint manned by U.S. and Iraqi-backed council members at about 1:00 p.m.(1000 GMT) 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 neighborhood, killing two of them 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.
U.S. and Iraqi security forces sealed off the area to secure the scene, he said.
The Awakening Councils are armed groups of local neighborhoods, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who fight the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.
Amriyah is one of many of Baghdad neighborhoods that are surrounded by concrete walls. The security walls have effective role in cutting violence as the movement of insurgents was hampered, but critics argued 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 U.S. and Iraqi officials.
Source: Xinhua
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