Three roadside bombs kill five Iraqi policemen

ROADSIDE bombs killed five Iraqi policemen and injured eight others north of Baghdad yesterday, an Iraqi official said.

Three bombs planted along a main thoroughfare targeted a police convoy in Jalawla, 95 kilometres north of Baghdad, said Ibrahim Bajilan, head of the provincial council of Diyala. The province, which lies northeast of Baghdad and borders Iran, remains a huge security challenge for the US-backed Iraqi government, even as violence has dropped in other parts of the country.

On Saturday night, a bomb killed the leader of a US-backed, Sunni armed group in Baghdad. The bomb exploded in the car of Fuad Ali Hussein, killing him, his deputy and two bodyguards. Hussein was head of a neighbourhood awakening council — a term describing Sunni fighters who turned against al-Qaida in Iraq and formed alliances with the United States. Hussein’s death was confirmed by a police officer and the head of another awakening council.

Also on Sunday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki formed a committee to investigate the killing of four employees of an Iraqi television station as they filmed an episode on the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The four, with the Al-Sharqiya station, were abducted and killed on Saturday in the northern city of Mosul.