An anti-Qaida paramilitary group leader and a gunman were killed Friday in two bomb explosions near the once restive city of Fallujah in Iraq's western province of Anbar, a local police source said, Xinhua reported.
Amer Lahij, leader of an Awakening Council group, was killed and his wife injured when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated while he was driving with his wife in the town of Garma, near Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The Awakening Council group consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.
Early in the day, a gunman was killed while trying to plant a roadside bomb near a coffee shop in central Garma, 8 km east of Fallujah, the source said.
The gunmen apparently targeted the popular coffee shop which is usually busy during the day, the source added.
Insurgent attacks continue in the once volatile Sunni Arab area in west of Baghdad that stretches through Anbar province to Iraq's western borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The vast desert area has been relatively calm for more than three years after Sunni tribes and anti-U.S. insurgent groups turned to cooperate with the U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces against al-Qaida network in Iraq.