A suicide bomber struck the headquarters of a US-allied Sunni militia south of Baghdad Saturday, killing nine people and extending a recent rise in deadly bombings across Iraq.
The bomber detonated his payload as an Iraqi army contingent was visiting the premises of the local Sahwa 'Awakening' movement in the town of Latifiyah to pay salaries, army officer Lieutenant Haidar al-Lami told AFP.
He added that another 23 people were wounded in the attack and that the dead and wounded included both Sahwa members and regular soldiers.
An interior ministry official in Baghdad said around 200 Sahwa militiamen had assembled at the headquarters to receive their salaries when the bomber struck.
"The suicide bomber was wearing military-style fatigues, which allowed him to sneak into the compound undetected," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The attack came at the end of a particularly deadly week in Iraq, where a series of bombings killed more than 70 people and wounded nearly 300.
The Sahwas, mostly made up of Sunni former insurgents who allied with US forces beginning in 2006 to drive out Al-Qaeda in Iraq, have played a crucial role in improving security in the war-battered country.
The Baghdad government took full responsibility for paying the Sahwas at the start of the month and has promised to absorb 20 per cent of the 92,000 fighters into the regular security forces.
Others have been promised government jobs or training.
But a Sunni Sahwa group in central Baghdad clashed with Shiite-led government forces earlier this month, and the Sahwas have complained of delays in the payment of salaries and their placement in new jobs.
"This was the third time we had come to get our salaries, because they postponed the payment the first two times," one Sahwa member wounded in yesterday's attack told AFP, asking not to be named.
The suicide bomber struck in a religiously mixed part of the Babel province once known as the 'Triangle of Death' that saw scores of gruesome attacks in the years following the March 2003 US-led invasion.