Suicide bomb attack kills 3 in Iraq's Diyala

Three security members were killed and 10 others wounded on Tuesday in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, in the wake of a deadly bomb attack at a coffee shop that sparked sectarian tension in the province, provincial police chief and a security source told Xinhua.

The attack occurred in the morning when a police intelligence force spotted a suicide car bomb in Jadidat al-Shat area in west of the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, Brigadier General Jasim al-Saadi, police chief of Diyala province, told Xinhua.

Based on intelligence reports, the force chased the suspected car, but the suicide bomber detonated it near the police vehicles, leaving an intelligence officer and two policemen killed, while the head of the provincial intelligence department Colonel Qasim al-Anbaki, two other officers and seven policemen were wounded in the blast, al-Saadi said.

He said the suicide car bomber was supposed to hit civilian targets in the area in an attempt to stir up sectarian tension between Sunni and Shiite communities, which already has been hiked after the twin bomb attacks the day before at a coffee shop attended by Shiite residents in the town of Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

A provincial security source told Xinhua that the toll from Monday evening massive explosions by a roadside bomb and then a car bomb at the crowded coffee shop in Maqdadiyah, rose to 27 people killed and 55 others wounded.

The sectarian tension in Maqdadiyah pushed Shiite militiamen to bomb four Sunni mosques in the town and 10 shops owned by Sunnis, the source said without elaboration.

About 7,515 people were killed and 14,855 injured in the armed conflict in Iraq during the 12 months of 2015, according to figures obtained from UN Assistance Mission for Iraq. Enditem