Baghdad - An attack on a police patrol and members of the
Sunni Iraqi Awakening Councils on Wednesday evening has claimed 28
lives, hospital reports stated on Thursday.
The ambush targeted the police patrol on Wednesday evening near al-
Dalimat village in Diyala province, 57 kilometres north-east of the
Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Eleven of the dead were members of the Awakening Councils, a Sunni
group that, allied with the US, has helped reduce violence in Iraq.
Sources said that the attackers killed a policeman before opening
fire on the patrol.
Police published a statement blaming al-Qaeda for the attack.
Two high-ranking officials were also among the dead.
The restive Diyala province has witnessed a military crackdown
since July, aiming to stem militant violence in the province.
Meanwhile, US forces said two of its soldiers had been killed, one
by a suicide bomber while on an operation in Diyala on Wednesday.
The US forces also denied reports by the VCI that an Iraqi man had
shot dead two US soldiers during a village raid called Khanasa near
al-Madain, 30 kilometres south of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Christians protested on Thursday against the
absence of a clause determining their quota of provincial coucil seats
in a new provincial elections law adopted the day before in the Iraqi
parliament.
The Students Federation of Chaldean Christians in Iraq objected to
the cancellation of a clause in the old law that reserved provincial
councils seats for Christians and other religious minorities.
The deletion of the law now leaves Iraq Christians
'disenfranchised,' the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency quoted the
group as saying.
Secretary of the Chaldean National Council, Daiaa Boutros, said
that removing the clause was dangerous in an Iraq that was moving
towards democracy, as the country had to preserve the rights of
minorities.
The Kurds also protested against an earlier draft of the law last
July which - according to them - favoured Arabs, Turkmen, and
Christians in the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk.
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