BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber struck the funeral of two anti-al-Qaida Sunni tribesmen in a town north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 50 people and wounding dozens, police said.
The blast was the latest this week to break a period of relative calm in Sunni areas, raising concerns that Sunni insurgents are reorganizing at a time when U.S. and Iraqi troops are battling Shiite militiamen elsewhere.
Over the past months, Sunni insurgent violence has eased with the increase in U.S. troops and the growth of so-called Awakening Councils, groups of Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents who have joined American forces in fighting al-Qaida-linked militants.
Thursday's attack took place in the town of Albu Mohammed about 90 miles north of Baghdad, during the funeral of two brothers who belonged to the local Awakening Council and had been killed in an attack a day earlier, police said.
The suicide bomber walked into a tent crowded with mourners in the village and detonated explosives strapped to his body, police in the nearby city of Kirkuk said.
Sheik Omar al-Azawi, a member of the local Awakening Council, was just pulling up at the tent in his car when the blast went off.
"I first heard a thunderous explosion and when I turned my eyes to the tent I saw fire and smoke coming out," al-Azawi, 51, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
"Panicked people were jumping and running on all sides, and then we started to evacuate those who were killed and wounded in our private cars until police and medical teams arrived," he said.
He said the bomber, believed to be in his late 50s, was dressed in traditional Arab robes and that guards in charge of searching mourners allowed him in without a search.
At least 50 people were killed and 50 injured in the blast, the police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media. The blast was the deadliest attack since March 6, when a bombing in central Baghdad killed 68.
Thursday's attack came on the heels of a string of suicide attacks on Tuesday that killed 60 people in four major cities in central and northern Iraq. Also Thursday, gunmen in Baghdad killed two members of an Awakening Council in the Sunni district of Azamiyah and wounded a third, said Awas Mohammed, the spokesman for local Awakening Council.
