Separate attacks in Diala leave 10 casualties

DIALA, Sept. 19 (Iraqi News) – Two Iraqi army officers and one civilian were killed and six others wounded in separate attacks in Diala on Friday, an official security source in the province said. “Two officers, one of them a lt. colonel, were killed when an improvised explosive device went off their military vehicle in Imam Mansour village, Baladruz district, (45 km) east of Baaquba city,” the source, who declined to have his name mentioned, told IraqiNews.com – Voices of Iraq – (Iraqi News). In another incident, the same source added, “one civilian man was killed and six others wounded on Friday evening after three Katyusha rockets fell inside a fuel station in central Baladruz”. The source did not give more details. Diala province, a mix of Sunnis and Shiites, extends to the northeast of Baghdad as far as the Iranian border. Its capital is Baaquba, 57 km northeast of Baghdad. It covers an area of 17,685 square kilometers (6,828 sq mi). In January 2008 Operation Phantom Phoenix was launched in an attempt to eradicate the remnants of al-Qaeda network following the Diala province campaign between 2006 and 2007. Later on, the Iraqi security forces had launched a wide-scale security campaign in Diala province. The operation, codenamed Bashaer al-Kheir (Promise of Good), is aimed at tracking down members of al-Qaeda network in Diala, Iraq’s most restive city, after the armed group lost its strongholds in the western Iraq predominantly Sunni province of al-Anbar, where tribesmen fought its members and flushed them out of the city. A large portion of the province is drained by the Diala River, a major tributary of the Tigris. Because of its proximity to two major sources of water, Diala’s main industry is agriculture, primarily dates grown in large Date Palm groves. It is also recognized as the orange capital of the Middle East.   AmR (S) 1