12 people killed, 35 wounded in Iraq's violence

Twelve people were killed and 35 wounded Thursday in separate gunfire and bomb attacks, including a suicide bomb attack in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala. In Diyala, a suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest at about 9:00 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) among a group of Awakening Council members at the entrance of an Iraqi army base in the Um al-Edham area near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a source from Diyala's operations command told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Minutes later, a booby-trapped car went off at a garage outside the base when Iraqi security forces arrived at the scene of the first blast, the source said. The two blasts left 10 people killed and 25 wounded, and set ablaze six civilian cars and three police vehicles at the scene, the source added. The Awakening Council group, or Sahwa in Arabic, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups which fought al-Qaida militants in the Sunni Arab areas after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Sami al-Khazraji, a leader of Diyala's anti-Qaida paramilitary groups, blamed al-Qaida militant group for carrying out such deadly suicide attacks against his groups. "The attack is holding the fingerprints of al-Qaida, but certainly it won't stop us from supporting the security forces in their fight against them until we bring stability and security to our people," Khazraji told Xinhua. Also on Thursday, gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in Baghdad's northwestern district of Hurriyah, killing one soldier and wounding another, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. A passer-by was also wounded by the attack, the source said. Separately, four people were wounded in two bomb attacks in eastern and southwestern Baghdad, the source said. In Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, a civilian was killed and another wounded when gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol in the city of Baaj, some 110 km west of Nineveh's capital city of Mosul, a provincial police source told Xinhua. Also in the province, a man and a woman were wounded when a gunman hurled a hand grenade near a police patrol in a marketplace in central Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, the source said. In Salahudin province, a soldier was wounded when a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in the city of Tuz- Khurmato, some 90 km east of the provincial capital city of Tirkit, a local police source said. The town is part of the disputed areas between the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkmen, as the Kurds demand to expand their autonomous region in northern Iraq to include the oil-rich and ethnically-mixed province of Kirkuk and other areas in the Iraqi provinces of Salahudin, Nineveh and Diyala. Salahudin province, located in northern-central of Iraq, is a mainly Sunni province. Its capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, is the hometown of the country's former President Saddam Hussein. Thursday's attacks raise questions about the capability of the Iraqi security forces to maintain security in the country alone, as the deadline for U.S. troops' withdrawal from the country is approaching. U.S. military forces are to pull out completely from Iraq by the end of 2011, according to a security pact named Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed late 2008 between Baghdad and Washington.