DHULUIYAH: Four people were killed and 13 others wounded on Wednesday when a suicide bomber targeted a US-allied militia leader at a mosque north of the Iraqi capital, security officials told media. The explosion happened in Dhuluiyah, 70 kilometres (45 miles) from Baghdad, said a police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity, giving a final toll of four dead and 13 wounded."It's an action of Al-Qaeda because only this organisation is committing suicide attacks," he said. An interior ministry source earlier said that five people had been killed. The attacker detonated his explosives-filled vest during evening prayers at around 8 pm (1700 GMT) in the Sunni town, in an attempt to kill Mullah Nadhem, a local US-allied Sahwa "Awakening" leader, the colonel said. Nadhem was not present but his brother was wounded in the attack. A bomb at the mosque last year also failed to kill Nadhem although he was wounded. Violence has fallen sharply over the past two years as US and Iraqi forces have allied with the Sahwa, local tribes and former insurgents, to bring calm to vast swathes of the country. But attacks remain common in some areas.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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