A suicide bomber dressed in military uniform infiltrated a gathering of US-allied Sunni fighters who were waiting to be paid, killing nine people and wounding dozens south of Baghdad on Saturday.
Lieutenant Haidar al-Lami told AFP that the bomber struck as an Iraqi army contingent visited the Sahwa "Awakening" movement in the town of Latifiyah to pay salaries, in an attack that capped the most deadly week in Iraq in months.
The nine dead and 33 wounded included both Sahwa members and regular soldiers, the army officer said.
An interior ministry official in Baghdad said around 200 Sahwa militiamen had assembled at the headquarters to receive their pay when the bomber detonated his explosives.
"The suicide bomber was wearing military-style fatigues, which allowed him to sneak into the compound undetected," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The suicide bomber struck in a religiously mixed area of Babil province that was once known as the "Triangle of Death" that saw scores of gruesome attacks in the years following the March 2003 US-led invasion.
The attack also came at the end of a particularly deadly week in Iraq, where a series of bombings killed 70 people and wounded more than 300.
The Sahwas, mostly made up of Sunni former insurgents who allied with US forces beginning in 2006 to drive out Al-Qaeda in Iraq, have played a crucial role in improving security in the war-battered country.
The Baghdad government took full responsibility for paying them at the start of the month and has promised to absorb 20 percent of the 92,000 fighters into the regular security forces.
Others have been promised government jobs or training.
But a Sunni Sahwa group in central Baghdad clashed with Shiite-led government forces earlier this month, and the Sahwas have complained of delays in the payment of salaries and their placement in new jobs.
"This was the third time we had come to get our salaries, because they postponed the payment the first two times," one Sahwa member wounded in Saturday's attack told AFP, asking not to be named.
The suicide bombing was the latest incident in a week that saw a wave of bombings in Baghdad and a suicide truck bomb in the northern city of Mosul on Friday that killed five US soldiers and three Iraqi security force members.
The Mosul bombing was the deadliest attack on American forces in more than a year and underscored the problem of maintaining security in some areas of the violence-wracked nation. The US military views Mosul as the last urban bastion of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The city -- Iraq's second largest -- has remained dangerous despite repeated US and Iraqi operations over the past several months, both because of ethnic divisions between its Sunni Arab and Kurdish residents and tribal rivalries.
In recent weeks, the US military has played down talk of a rise in violence, as its soldiers prepare to withdraw from cities and major towns by June 30 and from the entire country by the end of 2011.
Security has improved dramatically since 2007 but insurgents are still able to strike with deadly results.
A total of 252 Iraqis were killed in violence in March, almost the same number as the previous month but up from January's toll of 191.
A Palestinian youth rides his horse at sunset. AP Photo/Adel Hana
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