IRAQ: Al Qaeda militants kill eight local members of 'Awakening Council' in southern Baghdad after shooting two Iraqi soldiers and stealing their vehicle

Al Qaeda militants kill eight local members of 'Awakening Council' in southern Baghdad after shooting two Iraqi soldiers and stealing their vehicle, police said. Al Qaeda militants killed at least eight members of a neighbourhood police patrol in southern Baghdad on Thursday (November 22) after shooting two Iraqi soldiers and stealing their vehicles, police said. The al Qaeda fighters drove up to the police patrol in at least one stolen Iraqi army vehicle before opening fire in the Hawr Rajab area of southern Baghdad's Doura district, a predominantly Sunni Arab area and al Qaeda stronghold. An Interior Ministry official confirmed that eight "Awakening Council" members had been killed. He said three Iraqi soldiers were killed and another three were wounded, and that two al Qaeda gunmen had also been killed. Mainly Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs have been organising their young men into local police units, known as concerned local citizens, to drive out Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, which have been partly credited for falling levels of violence in Iraq. Police at Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital said two Iraqi army "humvee" vehicles had been seized at the start of the attack. They said the police at the Hawr Rajab checkpoint did not challenge the vehicles because they assumed soldiers were inside. The bodies of the eight on neighbourhood patrol and two soldiers were taken to the Yarmouk hospital in western Baghdad, Iraqi police said. Another four members of the patrol were wounded. "Members of the Awakening (Council) informed us that they have been attacked by the terrorist al Qaeda organization in Arab Jubour area. We have nine martyrs from the innocent civilians and four others wounded who are now in al-Yarmouk hospital," said an unidentified Iraqi police officer. Reuters Television footage showed several coffins loaded onto the back of a police truck to be taken to hospital. Another was tied to the top of a dilapidated car. A young woman and two toddlers, one of them crying, sat on the ground next to one simple wooden coffin. Attacks on neighbourhood police units are not uncommon but Thursday's bold assault was one of the largest of its kind in Baghdad. On Nov. 13, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed an estimated 15 al Qaeda gunmen in a fierce, day-long battle in Adwaniya, just south of Baghdad, after al Qaeda fighters attacked two neighbourhood police checkpoints there.

ITN Source | November 22, 2007

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