Suicide Bomber Kills 25 at Feast West of Baghdad, Iraq

24 August 2008 -- Iraqi officials say a suicide bomber has struck a dinner feast west of Baghdad, killing at least 25 people and wounding 32 others.

Officials say the attacker blew himself up at the home of a local sheikh who was celebrating his son's release from U.S. detention. The guests at the dinner included members of a Sunni Awakening council -- a U.S.-allied militia group that has turned against al-Qaida.

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In other violence Sunday, a double bomb attack in Baghdad against Iraqi security forces killed four people. In the eastern province of Diyala, a roadside bomb killed four Iraqi soldiers in the town of Balad Ruz, while gunmen also killed two policemen in Baquba, the provincial capital.

Also, the U.S. military says Iraqi police detained a 13-year-old girl strapped with explosives who surrendered in Diyala rather than blow herself up. It says the girl also led police to the location of a second suicide vest.

The U.S. military initially said a woman bomber had turned herself in.

The military also says its troops captured two senior al-Qaida militants in Baghdad this month, including a man suspected of planning the 2006 kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll.

The U.S. military says the alleged kidnapping mastermind, Salim Abdullah Ashur al-Shujayri (also known as Abu Othman), was captured on August 11. It says Shujayri's associates have been involved in other kidnappings of foreigners in Iraq.

Carroll was abducted in Iraq in January 2006 while reporting for the Christian Science Monitor. She was released three months later.

A military spokesman says the capture of Shujayri and the other militant (Ali Rash Nasir Jiyad al-Shammari, also known as Abu Tiba) eliminates two of the few remaining experienced leaders of al-Qaida's network in Iraq.

Source: VOA News