Thirteen anti-Qaeda tribe members killed in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AFP) - – Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms launched execution-style attacks west of Baghdad on Monday, killing 13 members of a tribe who took up arms against Al-Qaeda, a villager and security official said.

Also on Monday, six people died and seven were wounded when a booby-trapped car exploded at a market in the ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

Gunmen swarmed into the Saidan district of Zouba, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Baghdad, overnight and took six residents from their homes, lined them up in a field and shot them dead, said resident Mohammed al-Zoubai.

The killers then burst into the home of Attala Ouda al-Shuker, a leader in the Sahwa (Awakening) movement of Sunni tribesmen who joined US forces in 2006, and shot dead three of his sons and four other relatives, Zoubai said.

"They killed three of his sons and four cousins," he said, adding that all those killed were members of the Zouba tribe. The attackers then dumped the bodies at the local cemetery, he added.

"It was an Al-Qaeda group and they were wearing Iraqi army uniforms," Zoubai said.

Major General Qassim Atta, spokesman for the army's Baghdad operation, confirmed the toll but gave a different account. "The first indications we have is that 13 people were killed in a tribal conflict," he said.

An interior ministry official said armed men arrived in eight off-road cars resembling army vehicles during the night in Zouba village.

They took 13 people and drove them to a cemetery a few kilometres (miles) away, where "eight were killed with a bullet in the head after being tortured and five had their throats slit," the official said.

The Sahwa, knows as the Sons of Iraq by the US military, are widely credited with turning the tide of the war against Al-Qaeda. They have also been singled out by Al-Qaeda as being legitimate targets.

Since the start of 2009, nearly all the Sahwas have been placed on Baghdad's payroll, and the government has said it will eventually absorb 20 percent of them into the security services and find public sector jobs for the rest.

But dozens of Sahwa members have been arrested in recent months amid warnings that they have no immunity from prosecution.

In Kirkuk, a car blew up in the old market of Khan al-Tumur in the town centre, killing six people and wounding seven, according to police Colonel Salam Zangana.

The blast caused extensive damage to shops and the fronts of buildings, an AFP correspondent reported.

Kirkuk, and the surrounding province of the same name, is an ethnically divided and oil-rich region in Iraq's north.

Kurdish leaders want Kirkuk incorporated into their autonomous region, but the province's Arab and Turkmen communities remain strongly opposed to those ambitions.

The US forces in Iraq said last month that tensions between Arabs and Kurds, along a tract of disputed territory centred around Kirkuk are the top driver of instability in the country.