BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber killed 15 people, including at least six U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters, Sunday night near a crowded outdoor market in eastern Baghdad, security officials and local leaders said.
The deputy leader of the neighborhood’s U.S.-backed security volunteers who had turned against al-Qaida in Iraq, Farooq al-Obeidi, was among the dead, Iraqi officials said.
At least 30 people were wounded in the attack near the historic Abu Hanifa mosque, in the Sunni district of Adhamiya.
There were contradictory accounts about the incident. One police officer said the male bomber was disguised as a woman and arrived on foot; another said the attacker was not dressed as a woman and arrived on a bike.
More and more, militant groups have been using female suicide bombers to evade checkpoints and security checks because custom bars Iraqi men from frisking women.
But a senior police official said it was unlikely that explosives could have been smuggled into the area because of security checks around the wall and said he suspected the attack could have been part of a power struggle within the council.
At least 16 Sons of Iraq security volunteers have been killed in Adhamiya since last winter when the group was founded, said Abu Abed, the head of the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq security group in Adhamiya. He warned that al-Qaida in Iraq was regrouping in Baghdad.
“We informed American forces al-Qaida is reorganizing, and these are the results,” he said.
The Sons of Iraq movement has been credited for weakening al-Qaida in Iraq and helping to bring about the major drop in violence Iraq has witnessed since last fall. The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, however, remains deeply suspicious of the movement of Sunni fighters.
Also Sunday, insurgents raided a police checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, killing one police officer and wounding another, the provincial police command reported.
U.S.-backed Iraqi soldiers have been conducting a months-long operation in Mosul trying to clear the city of Sunni extremists including al-Qaida in Iraq.
Gunmen also assassinated a Sunni preacher, Loai Saad al-Din Othman, in a drive-by shooting in Mosul, police reported.
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