Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Baghdad skyline

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber dressed in a woman’s robe detonated explosives Sunday in a heavily guarded area of Baghdad, killing the deputy leader of a Sunni neighborhood’s security volunteers who had turned against al-Qaida, Iraqi officials said.

Six bodyguards of Farooq al-Obeidi, deputy leader of the “awakening council” in Baghdad’s Azamiyah district, were also killed in the blast, which occurred as they were seated outside a cafe in the former insurgent stronghold, police and Iraqi army officials said.

The assailant, wearing a black abaya robe, walked up to al-Obeidi’s party and detonated the explosives, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to talk to media.

Some of the officials said the attacker was a woman. But most of them said the attacker was a man who probably wore the flowing garment to conceal the explosives.

“While I was shopping just across the street, I heard a huge explosion,” said Omar Qassim, a member of al-Obeidi’s group. “Body parts were flying through the air. I immediately realized that Farooq’s party was targeted and he was probably dead.”

Such attacks have become rare in the center of Azamiyah since the U.S. military built a concrete wall around the heart of the north Baghdad neighborhood, where Saddam Hussein took refuge when the city fell to U.S. forces in April 2003.

Although Azamiyah was once a center of resistance to the U.S. and its Shiite allies, many local Sunnis later abandoned the insurgency and joined the awakening council, which provides security there alongside Iraqi soldiers and police.

Al-Qaida in Iraq has often targeted leaders of awakening councils. But Khalil Ibrahim, an aide to al-Obeidi, said the attack could have been carried out by rivals within the council itself.

“We had received information that we would be targeted by groups within Azamiyah and within the awakening movement itself,” he said, refusing to elaborate.

A senior police official also said it was unlikely that explosives could have been smuggled into the area because of security checks around the wall and said he suspected the attack could have been part of a power struggle within the council.