IRAQ:A woman wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 16 people and a suicide car bomb killed 10 in Iraq yesterday, in attacks aimed at units helping US forces fight al-Qaeda.
Police said 27 people were wounded in the first attack, when the bomber struck at former Sunni Arab insurgents who have switched sides to join US-backed security forces battling al-Qaeda.
The car bomb killed seven Iraqi soldiers and three members of a local neighbourhood patrol. Eight people were hurt.
Both strikes took place in religiously and ethnically mixed Diyala, Iraq's most violent province, where US forces say al-Qaeda gunmen are regrouping after being pushed from other areas.
Police said the woman bomber targeted a building used by members of the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades in the town of Muqdadiya, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of Baghdad.
The Brigades were once one of the main groups of Sunni Arab insurgents fighting US forces and the Shia-led government, but in recent months many members have begun working alongside security forces against Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda.
Witnesses said a woman walked up to the building, in a street full of shops and began asking questions. She detonated the vest she was wearing when people out shopping before Friday prayers began gathering around her.
"We saw several bodies. It is Friday and the area was crowded," Ammar Fadhel (35), a labourer, told Reuters.
The US military put the death toll at 12, with 18 wounded. All were civilians, it said. Police put the toll at 16 and said women and children were among the casualties.
In the second attack, a suicide car bomber struck a checkpoint in the village of Dali Abbas which, like Muqdadiya, is just north of Diyala's provincial capital, Baquba.
At least 61 people have been killed and about 90 wounded in Diyala province in the past week in five major bombing and shooting attacks.
While overall US troop numbers have started to fall in Iraq, force levels are increasing in Diyala.