BAGHDAD, Aug 11: The governor and police chief of Iraq’s Diwaniya province were killed when a roadside bomb hit their convoy on Saturday, police said. Diwaniya Governor Khalil Jalil Hamza and police chief Maj-Gen Khaled Hassan were returning to the provincial capital after attending the funeral of a tribal sheikh in the town of Efaj when their convoy was hit.

Maj-Gen Hassan had been in the job for less than a week, police said. Mr Hamza was a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC).

Three of their bodyguards were killed and three others wounded. Local authorities imposed an indefinite curfew.

A policeman said the bomb was an ‘explosively formed penetrator’.

Meanwhile, the second most senior US general in Iraq alleged that Iran was supplying militias in the country with weapons to attack United States troops in a bid to influence debate on the war in Washington ahead of a progress report due in weeks.

“In the last three months... we are seeing brand-new rocket launchers, mortars and mortar launchers,” Lt-Gen Raymond Odierno told Reuters in an interview.

North of Baghdad, US forces claimed success in denying Al Qaeda control of towns and villages along the Diyala River valley.

“We have forces throughout the Diyala valley in key critical nodes. We cross any line of communications, deny the enemy freedom of movement. Everything they do is watched,” Lt-Col Andrew Poppas, Commander of US forces in the area, told reporters in Baghdad by video link. He said Al Qaeda fighters had fled from the provincial capital Baquba.

In Baghdad, militants bombed the house of a Sunni cleric, critically wounding him and killing three of his relatives. The attack, which was followed by a fierce fire fight, came after Sheik Wathiq Al Obeidi called on residents in Aamiyah to rise up against ‘foreign fighters’.

In Albu Khalifa, a village west of Baghdad, a local tribal leader, Sheik Fawaq Sadda Al Khalifawi, was gunned down by militants who broke into his home, police said.—Reuters/AP