A roadside bomb killed four people, including three army soldiers, and wounded 11 people south of Baghdad Saturday, Iraqi officials said. The blast took place near the municipal offices of the Rashid district just south of the Iraqi capital as soldiers were responding to an earlier explosion in the same area. The first explosion, also caused by a roadside bomb, did not cause any casualties. Police and hospital officials said the three soldiers and a bystander succumbed to their wounds in a Baghdad hospital. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Meanwhile, a police spokesman in Diyala province said the head of a five-member family killed Friday when a roadside bomb hit the car in which they were traveling was a local leader of a government-backed Sunni armed group known as an Awakening Council. The group's fighters rose up against Al-Qaeda militants in late 2006 and 2007, first joining the U.S. military in its fight against the terror network and later working with the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The police spokesman, Maj. Ghalib Al-Karkhi, had earlier said that the family was not the intended target of the bombing, which struck near the town of Buhriz, 35 miles (60 kilometers) north of Baghdad. The man, his wife and three children - two boys and a 4-year-old girl - were killed in the attack. Members and leaders of Awakening Councils have been frequent targets of assassinations and bombings blamed on Al-Qaeda. Violence has dramatically dropped in Iraq since 2008, but insurgent attacks remain a daily occurrence at a time when U.S. forces are withdrawing, leaving the country's nascent forces alone in charge of security. Meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers arrested two suspected insurgents behind a brazen series of attacks in Baghdad this week that killed 16 people and wounded 14 others, a security official said. The pair were arrested as a result of security camera footage that showed insurgents setting alight three dead soldiers and planting Al-Qaeda's flag, a defence ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The private surveillance tape was taken from a shop in the predominantly Sunni area of Adhamiyah where the attack, which also involved homemade bombs being placed on routes to the scene of the fire, took place on Thursday. “The private security camera recorded the entire operation and shows the gunmen attack an army checkpoint, plant bombs and burn dead bodies,” the official said. According to the official, the videotape shows the gunmen killing the soldiers after a 10-minute gun battle, pouring oil over their bodies and setting them on fire. “Then, they put bombs on the roads leading to the scene, and planted the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq (Al-Qaeda's front group) near the dead bodies before fleeing,” the official said. He said two people including a lawyer had been arrested as a result of the footage of the attacks, which occurred within 15 minutes of each other. In addition to the original killing of the soldiers, three homemade bomb attacks on different routes to the scene of the shooting killed 13 more people, including three soldiers and three policemen, and wounded 14, among them seven police and two civil defence members, the interior ministry said. Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta said “large numbers of weapons and explosions were found within the last 24 hours” in raids as part of an investigation into the attack. “A number of suspects and wanted persons have been arrested after the terrorist attack in Adhamiyah,” he said.
