Two Awakening Council group members were killed and five people injured in two separate attacks in and near Baghdad on Thursday, an Interior Ministry source said, Xinhua reported
Unidentified armed men stormed a checkpoint manned by members of a local Awakening Council group in the Jurf al-Sakhr area, some 60 km south of Baghdad, killing two of the group members before they fled the scene, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The Awakening Councils, or Sahwa groups, are paramilitary groups formed from some powerful former anti-U.S. insurgent groups, who fight the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb detonated in the afternoon outside a bank in the al-Wihda neighborhood in central Baghdad, wounding five pedestrians, the source said.
Sporadic attacks continue in Iraq as part of recent deterioration in security which shaped a setback to the efforts of the Iraqi government to restore normalcy in the country after more than four months of U.S. troops pullout of cities and towns.