A suicide bomber sneaked through the back door of a crowded hall where guests had gathered for a reconciliation lunch at the invitation of a tribal sheik Friday and detonated explosives, killing at least 23 people and wounding dozens more in the worst attack in Iraq in weeks, washingtonpost reported.
Iraqi officials said the assailant, a relative of the sheik, was a familiar presence around the house, making it easier for him to pass unsearched through an entrance usually reserved for women in the conservative town of Yusufiya, about 12 miles south of Baghdad.
Once inside the hall, the man detonated a bomb that he had strapped around his waist, said Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, a spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry.
Security officials in the province, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 25 people were killed. But in the confused aftermath of the attack, there were discrepancies in the toll. Atta said 23 people were killed and 42 were wounded. The U.S. military said initial reports, based on local sources, put the toll at 23 killed and 32 wounded.
The attack marks the worst in Iraq since a suicide bomber killed 57 people at a Dec. 11 meeting of Arab and Kurdish leaders in Kirkuk that had been intended to reduce tension in that contested city. A car bombing in Baghdad on Dec. 27 killed at least 22 people.
Like the meeting in Kirkuk, Friday's gathering was also convened to foster reconciliation -- this time, between Sunni and Shiite tribes in a region once wracked by fighting and nicknamed the Triangle of Death, said Capt. Muthanna Ahmed, a spokesman for the provincial police.
The region south of Baghdad, with a combustible mix of tribes and religious sects, was once one of Iraq's most dangerous. But as in much of the country, save for the troubled region around the northern city of Mosul, violence has dropped markedly the past year. At the same time, however, attacks like Friday's have shattered any pretense of enduring calm.
Tribal leaders, in particular, have become targets after turning against insurgents who had long acted as a law unto themselves in the largely rural region.
Ahmed said assailants on Friday also killed two fighters loyal to the Sons of Iraq movement, an American-organized group made up in part of some of those former Sunni insurgents. Four others were wounded in that clash Thursday night at their checkpoint northwest of the city of Hilla, near the home of the group's leader in the area, Sabah al-Jannabi. Ahmed said the assailants might have planned to storm Jannabi's home.
Preparations for provincial elections on Jan. 31 have stepped up across the Arab regions of Iraq, promising to recalibrate political power here for the first time since the last elections were held in 2005. No vote will be held in the northern, Kurdish regions. Many in the country expect violence to escalate in the competition over the vote, with traditional Sunni parties losing influence to groups such as the Sons of Iraq and rival Shiite parties jockeying for influence in Basra and the southern provinces of the country.