26 die in tiny Kurdish village

BAGHDAD — A suicide car bomber struck outside a cafe in a tiny Kurdish village near the Iranian border Friday, killing 26 people in a remote part of a province where U.S. forces are waging an offensive against Sunni insurgents, police said.

The blast ripped through the coffee shop near a market of Iranian goods in the village of Ahmad Maref, 87 miles northeast of Baghdad, said an official at the joint security coordination committee of Diyala province. At least 33 people were wounded, said the official.

The village is home to about 30 Kurdish families who had been expelled under Saddam Hussein's rule and returned after his fall. Many Kurds in the area are Shiite Muslims.

The village lies in the remote end of Diyala, a province where U.S. forces have been waging two offensives since mid-June, one focusing on Baqouba, Diyala's capital northeast of Baghdad, the other on Salman Pak, a region southeast of the capital. The sweeps aim to close off an escape route for insurgents fleeing a security crackdown in Baghdad and to uproot al-Qaida militants and other fighters who use the region as a staging ground for attacks in the capital.

The U.S. military today announced the deaths of six more American service members in combat operations in Iraq, most in the Baghdad area.

Two soldiers died Friday and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in east Baghdad, the military said.

A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed Friday when a bomb exploded near their patrol in southeastern Baghdad, the military said. Three soldiers were wounded.

Three other service members were killed Thursday — two Marines in western Anbar province and a soldier in Baghdad, the command said.

An alleged al-Qaida militant, meanwhile, was executed for his role in one of Iraq's first major bombings, an August 2003 blast that killed a Shiite leader and 84 other people and foreshadowed the four-year insurgency that followed, a Justice Ministry official said Friday.

Oras Mohammed Abdul-Aziz was hanged Tuesday after being sentenced to death in October, Ministry Undersecretary Busho Ibrahim said.

The execution announcement was the first word that a suspect had been tried in the killing of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack — a huge car bomb that went off outside the Shrine of Ali in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites, and killed al-Hakim.

Al-Hakim was the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and was poised to become a major figure in Iraqi politics following Saddam's fall. His brother, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, now heads the group, the largest Shiite party in parliament.

Ibrahim said Abdul-Aziz was affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq and confessed to other attacks..