Iraqi police kill female suicide bomber

Baghdad, Oct 18 (DPA) Iraqi police killed a female suicide bomber just as she exploded her vest near a checkpoint in the northern province of Salahaddin, police said Saturday.

Police tried to stop the woman, who appeared to be in her 20s and was wearing long robes. After she ignored repeated orders to stop, a policeman shot her, just when she detonated her vest, police officer Mohamed Khaled Abdel Hamid told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

The incident comes amid ongoing security worries about female suicide attackers, wearing black, head-to-toe robes, being able to more easily to infiltrate crowds because they are less frequently subjected body searches.

Religious and cultural rules prevent security officers from touching women while conducting searches.

In Hillah, some 100 km south of Baghdad, unknown gunmen in a car shot a leader of the Awakening Councils and then escaped. Abdel Hadi Ali Mekky was in his car when the attackers approached him with their car and shot him, police told VOI.

Awakening Councils or Sons of Iraq are the tribal police who have cooperated with the US to fight the Al Qaeda in this country.

Separately, a woman was killed and four of her family were wounded when a bomb went off in front of her house in al-Saeda district in Baquba city, a security source said.

Another civilian was killed by unidentified gunmen in front of a shop in al-Moalimeen district west of Baquba, located some 60 km north of Baghdad.

In further violence, an Iraqi soldier was killed and two soldiers were wounded in a blast at their army checkpoint in Amariya district west of Baghdad, an army source told VOI.

Also, three policemen were wounded by a blast that struck their patrol in the Sunni Iraqi province of Anbar. The injured were moved to a hospital and Iraqi police cordoned off the area in search for the attackers, VOI reported.