Anti-Qaida paramilitary leader, 2 bodyguards killed near Baghdad

17:58, August 10, 2010

A leader of a government-backed paramilitary militia and two of his bodyguards were killed in a town in south of Baghdad on Tuesday, an Interior Ministry source said.

Malik Yaseen al-Janabi, a leader of an Awakening Council group in the town of Jurf al-Sakhar, was killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on his car while he was leaving his home in the town located in northern Babel province, some 60 km south of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Two of Janabi's bodyguards were also killed by the attack, the source said.

The Awakening Council group consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who fought the al- Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

In a separate incident, a sticky bomb attached to a civilian car detonated in the morning in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of al-Amil, wounding two civilians aboard, the source added.

Also in the capital, at least one Katyusha rocket struck overnight the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses some of the government offices and foreign embassies, he said.

The source could not give further details about the attack on the roughly 10 square km zone which is located in the central Baghdad on the west bank of the Tigris River that bisects the Iraqi capital.

Violence are still common in Iraqi cities as part of recent deterioration in security which shaped a setback to the efforts of the Iraqi government to restore normalcy in the country five months after violence-torn Iraq held parliamentary elections on March 7.

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90854/7099924.html