Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Jaber Fares Dhaher was killed and 17 people, mostly Iraqi police, were injured in a wave of bombings in Baghdad Aug. 18. The Sheikh was killed when insurgents attacked his car in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Zafaraniyah. His wife and daughter were also wounded. The previous night, a suicide bomber who blew himself up near Abu Hanifa mosque, one of Iraq's most prominent Sunni shrines, in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah, killing at least 15 and wounding 30. The dead included Faruq al-Obeidi, a local leader of the Sons of Iraq, a US-backed force of former Sunni insurgents who have turned their weapons against al-Qaeda. (AFP, WP, Aug. 18)

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