BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber blew himself up in a funeral tent, killing 19 mourners north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, police said on Monday.
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Police said that 54 were wounded in the attack in the northern town of Taji.
The gathering had been in honour of an official in the pro-government Sahwat militia.
It said that elsewhere in northern Iraq, at least four policemen and Shiite militiamen working with them were killed in a blast while searching an explosives-rigged house for suspected Sunni extremists.
According to the official, 13 were wounded in the explosion in the town of Ishaqi, around 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, while the dead included the chief of the town’s police.
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Attacks targeting security forces in Iraq are widely believed to be carried out by Sunni militants.
Iraqi security forces, backed by a U.S.-led aerial campaign, have in recent months stepped up efforts to dislodge the militant Islamic state group from the country.
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The radical Sunni militia also controls considerable territory in neighbouring Syria.
A monitoring group said that a car bomb went off on Monday near a gas plant in the central Syrian province of Homs, killing eight people, including four soldiers, and wounding 15.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two jihadists, believed to be from Islamic State, were seen in a car in the area of Firqlos before the explosion.
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Syria’s energy facilities have been repeatedly targeted by rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad. (dpa/NAN)