Diwaniyah

The governor and police chief of Iraq’s southern Diwaniya province were killed in a roadside bombing on Saturday, police said. Police said the two men had been returning to Diwaniya, the provincial capital, from a funeral for a leading tribal sheikh 30km east of the city when the bomb hit their convoy of four-wheel drives.

Iraqi and Untied States forces clashed with Shi’ite militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr as they launched a major operation at dawn on Friday to return the volatile city of Diwaniya to government control. In Ramadi, west of Baghdad, a truck bomb killed at least 15 people and spewed chlorine gas into the air.

Hard-pressed Iraqi government forces were forced to strike a truce with Shi’ite militia fighters on Tuesday, as fierce fighting followed by a pipeline explosion left 155 people dead. Officials said that 81 people died in Diwaniyah in Monday’s clashes between security forces and militiamen and that on Tuesday a fire at a fuel pipeline outside the town killed 74 more.