Neo-Salafis Fight Back.

A Qaeda suicide bomber on Aug. 26 blew himself up in a crowd of Iraqi police recruits in the town of Jalawla in Diyala, killing 28 people and wounding 45. It was the biggest attack for weeks in Iraq, which has been enjoying some of its lowest levels of violence in four years. Police recruitment centres have been frequent targets by Neo-Salafi militants in the past, especially al-Qaeda, which views recruits as collaborators with the US-led occupation.

The ethnically and religiously mixed Diyala has emerged as the most violent part of Iraq. Neo-Salafi militants there have shown they are still capable of carrying out devastating, large-scale bomb attacks. On Aug. 24, a suicide bomber killed 25 people at a dinner banquet in western Baghdad's largely Sunni Abu Ghraib district, where local tribal shaikhs had driven out al Qaeda militants over the past two years.

US and Iraqi forces have been carrying out an offensive against al-Qaeda in Diyala for the past month, saying the militants have regrouped there after being pushed out of other parts of Iraq. The US military says al-Qaeda's network has been greatly weakened by a loss of popular support and a spate of security operations against it, but has not been stamped out. Some fighters are holed up in deep bunkers and hidden tunnels surrounded by booby-traps in Diyala's dense palm groves. The northern part of Diyala is also home to a sizeable Kurdish population, and Kurdish Peshmerga security forces have reached a deal with the central government in Baghdad to withdraw.

Jalawla, near Khanaqin, is about 130 km north of Baghdad in a region where some districts are in dispute between the Baghdad government and the KRG. The area has been regularly attacked by Neo-Salafi groups exploiting the ethnic and sectarian tensions. The Iraqi authorities were recruiting in Jalawla in a drive to increase the number of security forces in Diyala, where many police officers and soldiers had been killed in earlier attacks.

Security officials in the provincial capital, Ba'quba, said the bomber had been a young man who wore a long, white traditional robe and who approached the recruits through a market area and then blew himself up. An Iraqi explosives expert said the bomber had worn 25 kilos of explosive materials packed with steel ball bearings, which increased the casualties.

In Khanaqin, thousands of Kurdish demonstrators turned out to demand the town become part of the KRG territory. They also demanded the withdrawal of Arab-dominated units of the Iraqi Army, which moved into the town to replace Kurdish forces who left earlier in August.

The authorities on Aug. 27 reported the arrest in the previous week of of Nazar al-Khafaji, University of Diyala president, and Hussein al-Zubaidi, head of the provincial council's security committee, for having aided al-Qaeda. The report said more than 20 Diyala residents had complained about Khafaji and Zubaidi. The high-profile arrests prompted angry complaints by Sunni leaders, and the 41-member provincial council suspended work. The council chief, Ibrahim Bajilan, on Aug. 27 said the council members would not return to work until the detainees were released.