At least 20 people were killed and 28 others wounded in a Monday evening attack in the provisional capital Baquba, DPA quoted medical and police sources as saying. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a Ramadan iftar (breakfast) banquet inside a Shiite mosque in central Baquba, sources said. The banquet gathered Shiite and Sunni top officials including the Baquba governor and police chief, who was killed in the incident, as well as a senior US military officer and other local leaders. Sources said the number of casualties was likely to rise due to the severity of the injuries. Diyala province has been the hotbed of armed groups, especially al-Qaeda terrorist network militants. Joint Iraqi-US forces, cooperatively with local leaders, had launched last June a security operation aimed to eliminate al-Qaeda in the province.
