Scores dead in Iraq suicide attack

Baghdad: A suicide bomber struck the funeral of two anti-Al Qaida Sunni tribesmen in a town north of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 50 people, police said.

The blast was the latest this week to break a period of relative calm in Sunni areas, raising concerns that Sunni insurgents are reorganising.

Over the past months, violence has dropped with the increase in US troops and the growth of so-called Awakening Councils.

Yesterday's attack took place in the town of Albu Mohammad about 150km north of Baghdad, during the funeral of two brothers who belonged to the local Awakening Council and had been killed in an attack a day earlier, police said.

The suicide bomber walked into a tent crowded with mourners in the village and detonated explosives strapped to his body, police in Kirkuk said.

One witness, Shaikh Omar Al Azawi, was just pulling up at the tent in his car when the blast went off.

"I first heard a thunderous explosion and when I turned my eyes to the tent I saw fire and smoke coming out," Al Azawi, 51, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"Panicked people were jumping and running on all sides and then we started to evacuate those who were killed and wounded in our private cars until police and medical teams arrived," he said.

At least 50 people were killed and 20 injured in the blast, the police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to talk to the media. The blast was the deadliest attack since March 6, when a bombing in central Baghdad killed 68.

Yesterday's attack came on the heels of a string of suicide attacks on Tuesday that killed 60 people in four major cities in central and northern Iraq.

The US military said an unmanned drone has killed two gunmen in Baghdad's Sadr City district. The military said the drone identified the two men carrying AK-47 rifles.

US military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said on Wednesday that despite this week's stepped-up violence, the overall situation in Iraq has markedly improved over the past year.

"We have said all along that there will be variants in which we will see Al Qaida and other groups seek to reassert themselves," Bergner said.

But the new Sunni violence comes as fighting has increased between US-Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen, particularly members of anti-US cleric Moqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army.

On Wednesday, fresh clashes broke out in Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City between US-backed Iraqi troops and Shiite militiamen, leaving two men dead and 18 people wounded, police said. In Basra, a US drone killed four militants.