Pro-U.S. Volunteer Force Attacked in Iraq
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Sunday, December 16, 2007
BAGHDAD, Dec. 15 -- A wave of violence, including attacks on a pro-American Sunni volunteer force, left eight people dead in Iraq on Saturday, police officials said.
The assaults came as the U.S. military reported the death of an American soldier, killed by small-arms fire in the northern province of Nineveh on Friday.
In the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah in northern Baghdad, a member of the volunteer force Sahwa -- or "Awakening" -- was killed and three were injured when a man delivered a bomb, placed inside a car anti-theft device, to guards at the front gate.
"The guards took the bomb inside the office, and it exploded," said Col. Ejbayir Rashid, a senior Sahwa official.
The group's commander in Adhamiyah, Riyadh al-Samarai, said that it was the first time he had lost one of his fighters. "We usually got attacked by snipers while patrolling the neighborhood, but the shots were never accurate," Samarai said.
In recent months, Sunni tribes have turned their weapons against the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, rejecting its harsh tactics. But that effort has elicited a lethal response from the militant group, and Sahwa volunteers, numbering about 70,000, are increasingly being targeted.
In southern Baghdad on Saturday, armed men fired at a checkpoint manned by another Sahwa force, injuring three of the volunteers, police officials said.
"We expect that attacks against us would increase unless the government would help us," Rashid said. "The government is hiding inside the Green Zone, and we are fighting in the hot zones. Only Americans are assisting us."
In other violence, a roadside bomb killed four people, including two policemen, and injured five civilians in Baghdad's Sha'ab district, police said.
Another roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded two people in Baghdad's al-Jidida district, police said, and gunmen assassinated a police colonel in Amin district, east of Baghdad.
In the town of Jibla, a roadside bomb killed one policeman and injured another, police said.
Correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
