The Associated Press
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
Northeast of the capital, six Kurdish troops died in a roadside bombing that reflected how ethnic tensions in some parts of Iraq remain dangerously high, a local official said.
The dead in the attack in eastern Baghdad included three Iraqi police commandos and a member of a U.S.-funded armed Sunni group that has turned against al-Qaida in Iraq, police and medics said on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. Seven Iraqi security personnel and two bystanders were injured.
The Kurdish peshmerga forces, including a brigadier general, died while on patrol in the city of Khanaqin, 90 miles northeast of Baghdad near the border with Iran, said Ibrahim Bajilan, head of the Diyala provincial council. Two other troops were injured.
Diyala is critical to Baghdad's security because of its strategic importance as a conduit for the smuggling of weapons and fighters to the capital. Its proximity to Iran is also important because U.S. officials have accused Tehran of supporting Shiite militias in Iraq.
Despite security gains, Diyala has a volatile mix of Sunni and Shiite militants along with desert terrain and dense palm groves that provide refuge. A large Kurdish community adds to the mix and some Iraqi government officials are concerned that forces from the Kurds' autonomous region in northern Iraq are encroaching on territory there.
The attacks underscored the persistent threat in Iraq despite significant security gains since last year that have been attributed to the U.S. troop surge and the backlash against al-Qaida in Iraq by many Sunni insurgents who tired of the extremist group's attacks on Iraqis. A crackdown by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government on Shiite militiamen earlier this year also helped quell violence.
Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin and Hamid Ahmed contributed to this report.
