14 killed in attacks in eastern Iraq

Fourteen people were killed and 15 wounded in two attacks in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala on Thursday, a provincial police source said. At least 11 people were killed and 15 wounded when a roadside bomb went off among a crowd of people who gathered to check the site of a preceding bomb explosion at a marketplace in a village near the restive city of Maqdadiyah, some 40 km northeast of the provincial capital city of Baquba, which itself is about 65 km northeast of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Sectarian tension and reprisal killings have been running high recently between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the volatile city of Maqdadiyah, as Sunnis and Shiites accuse each other of supporting extremists and militiamen. In a separate incident, a truck driver and two companions were shot dead by gunmen while they were travelling in their truck loaded with foodstuff in Adheim area, about 60 km north of Baquba, the source said. Earlier in the day in Salahudin province, a police source said that unidentified gunmen set up a fake checkpoint near the town of Sulaiman Bek, some 90 km east of the provincial capital of Tikrit, and shot dead 14 truck drivers, who were all Shiites. Thursday's attack came amid increasing violence that was sparked on April 23, when Iraqi security forces stormed an anti- government Sunni protest in Hawijah city, some 220 km north of Baghdad, killing and wounding dozens of protesters. The military operation against the sit-in camp in Hawijah led to further clashes across the country's predominantly Sunni provinces between the Sunni tribes and the Shiite-dominated security forces.