Curfew Imposed After Suicide Bombing Kills 8 in Iraq
By VOA News
16 January 2008
A curfew has been imposed in Iraq's volatile Diyala province, where earlier Wednesday a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a crowded market, killing eight people.
Officials say several others were wounded in Wednesday's attack in a mainly Shi'ite town near Baquba, capital of Diyala.
The curfew also covers Baghdad, Al-Furat al-Awsat and 10 southern provinces, including Kerbala, Babel and Najaf.
Separately, the U.S. military has announced that one of the key al-Qaida in Iraq leaders in Diyala, Abu Layla al-Suri, also known as Abu Abd al-Rahman, was killed in a military operation near Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad last December.
The U.S. military this month launched an offensive in Diyala aimed at driving out al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents from the religiously mixed province.
Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Baghdad, where she praised recent steps towards national reconciliation.
Speaking in the Iraqi capital, Rice welcomed the Iraqi parliament's recent passage of a law Saturday allowing former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to regain government jobs. Rice said passage of the new law is a sign reconciliation is moving along.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.
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