Five killed in bomb attacks in western Iraq

BAGHDAD, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Two bomb explosions in Iraq's western province of Anbar on Saturday killed five people and wounded six others, an Interior Ministry source said.

A roadside bomb targeting Naim al-Halbousi, an Awakening Councils group leader in the town of Garma, some 15 km northwest of the city of Fallujah, killed three of his bodyguards, including his son, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Halbousi was seriously wounded by the blast, along with three bystanders who were close to the site of the explosion, the source said.

The Awakening Councils are 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.

In a separate incident, an explosive charge detonated outside the house of an Iraqi police officer in the city of Fallujah, some50 km west of Baghdad, killing two of his daughters and wounding two more family members, the source added.

The officer himself survived the attack unhurt, he said.

Sporadic attacks continue in Iraq despite two weeks of U.S. troops withdrawal from the country's cities and towns in line with a security pact signed late last year between Baghdad and Washington.