10 killed, 20 wounded in attacks in Iraq

At least 10 people were killed and 20 others wounded Friday in two back-to-back bomb attacks against government-backed Sunni militiamen in western Iraq, police said. The first bomb exploded in the car of a police officer as he was driving the car near a check point run by the Sahwa militia in Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. When the people gathered around the site, another bomb exploded, the source said, adding that the two bomb attacks killed 10 people and wounded 20, most of them Sahwa militiamen. The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks. High-profile bomb attacks are still common in Iraq despite the dramatic decrease since its peak in 2006 and 2007, when the country was engulfed in sectarian killings.