Suicide bomber kills 17

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber killed 17 people in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad on Monday. Meanwhile, after a suicide bombing Sunday near Fallujah in Anbar province, local tribesmen burned the house of the young suicide bomber's family and prevented a female cousin from collecting the bomber's head for burial.

In the attack Monday, a teenager in Hajaj village near the northern oil-refinery town of Baiji entered a communal hall where a feast was under way, marking the end of the seven-day mourning period for the uncle of a high-ranking security official in the Salahuddin provincial government. The bomber detonated his explosive vest, demolishing the hall.

Seventeen were killed and 11 wounded, according to a senior official. The level of anger Monday in Albo Issa, the village where the Sunday bombing took place, laid bare the intensity of the blood feuds and vengeance killings that often characterize the violence in the provinces.

The bomber struck at a celebratory lunch among members of the local Awakening Council, the American-backed movement of Sunni Arab tribes opposed to al-Qaida in Iraq. According to witnesses, a boy of 13 or 14 identified as Ali Hussein Allawi al-Issawi detonated his vest just after handing chocolates to his host. Four people were killed, including the bomber.

On Sunday night, some of the men who had lost relatives in the bombing set his house on fire, triggering explosions because of the amount of ammunition stored there, said Mohammed Hadi Hassan, 20, whose father was among the bomb victims.

At dusk Monday, gunshots rang out in the village. Relatives of Hussein were trying to keep a female cousin of the bomber from retrieving the young boy's head so that it could be properly buried.

The military announced Monday the deaths of two U.S. soldiers in combat on Saturday. A Marine was killed in Anbar province and a soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device while on patrol in Arab Jabour, south of Baghdad, in a new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the military has turned to as a way to reduce casualties from roadside bombs.

Seven unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad and two in Mosul. Two Iraqi civilians were killed near Samarra when an improvised explosive device detonated beneath their vehicle.