BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber attacked a checkpoint manned by a group fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq forces, killing 12 people in one of a series of strikes Monday against the largely Sunni movement singled out by Osama bin Laden as a “disgrace and shame.”
Leaders of the rapidly expanding U.S.-backed movement, credited with helping slash violence across the country by 60 percent since June, condemned bin Laden’s latest message to his followers.
“We consider our fighting against al-Qaeda to be a popular revolution against the devil,” said Sheik Mohammed Saleh al-Dohan, head of one of the groups in southern Ramadi, a city in Anbar province where the movement was born.
Al-Dohan blamed al-Qaeda, which espouses a radical version of Sunni Islam, for bringing destruction to Iraq: “They made enemies between Sunnis, Shiites and Christians who lived in peace for centuries.” Bin Laden and his fighters “are the traitors who betrayed the Muslim nation and brought shame to Islam in all the world,” he said.
In an audiotape that emerged Saturday, bin Laden warned Iraq’s Sunni Arabs against joining the groups, known as “awakening councils,” or participating in any unity government. He said Sunnis who join the groups “have betrayed the nation, and they will suffer in life and in the afterlife.”
In the most serious attack against one of the groups Monday, a suicide bomber drove a minibus rigged with explosives into a checkpoint in Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, killing 12, police and a member of the local awakening council said.
West of the capital, a mortar round believed to have been targeting a council headquarters wounded three civilians when it landed on a nearby house, while gunmen shot and wounded an awakening-council member in Hafriyah, a village 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, police said.
And in Khalis, north of Baghdad, gunmen traded fire with police and awakening-council members, killing one member of the group and a policeman.
