Anti-Qaida group leader, Iraqi soldier killed in bomb attacks near Baghdad

BAGHDAD, July 19 (Xinhua) -- An Awakening Council group leader and an Iraqi soldier were killed in two bomb attacks near the Iraqi capital on Sunday, an Interior Ministry source said.

Mahmoud Abdulla, leader of Awakening Council group in the town of Madain, 30 km southeast of Baghdad, was killed when a bomb planted in his car detonated, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

A civilian with him in the car was wounded in the blast, 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, a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi Army patrol in the town of Abu Ghraib, some 20 km west of Baghdad, killing a soldier and wounding three others, the source added.

Sporadic attacks continue in Iraq despite two weeks after 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.