Deaths from Baghdad funeral bomb rise to 36

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The toll from the deadliest Baghdad attack in five months rose to 36 killed and 34 wounded, said an Iraqi Interior Ministry official on Wednesday.

Tuesday's suicide bombing on a funeral procession preceded another suicide blast that killed four people Wednesday near a Baquba hospital, said police.

The Baquba bomber, who set off his explosives in a crowd of people, also wounded 23 others, a police official said.

The attack on the Shiite funeral took place in the mixed eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Zayouna. Mourners gathered for Nabil Hussein, an Iraqi killed Friday in a car bombing in central Baghdad's Tayaran square, the Interior Ministry official said.

"At the end of a three-day mourning period, a terrorist blew up himself in the mourning tent, leaving bodies scattered," Abu Hasanain, a man wounded in the attack, told AP Television News from his hospital bed.

The attack was the deadliest in the capital since August 1, when a blast from a fuel tanker rigged with explosives killed at least 50 people and wounded 60 others in the western Mansour district.

The funeral was for one of 14 people killed and 64 wounded when a parked car detonated near the square, a popular shopping district for food and clothes.

Several of the dead from Tuesday's funeral attack were relatives of Hussein and at least one was an immediate family member, the official said.

Wednesday's attack in Baquba appeared to target members of a local anti-al Qaeda Awakening Council -- who were among the casualties.

Awakening Councils are predominantly Sunni and are sometimes are composed of former militants. Many of them have been recruited by the U.S. military's "Concerned Local Citizen's Program" to work against al Qaeda in Iraq.

In recent weeks, al Qaeda in Iraq has launched an aggressive attack campaign against Awakening Councils.

The violence represents "perhaps one of the clearest indications of the importance that these Awakening movements and Concerned Local Citizens are having on improving the security situation," said Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a U.S. military spokesman, according to the Associated Press.

"The fact that al Qaeda is targeting them is clearly an indication ... that they are concerned about it and that this grass roots movement has changed the dynamic and is perhaps the clearest evidence of Iraqi citizens rejecting Taliban ideology," Bergner told AP.

On Monday morning, a suicide car bomber struck an Awakening Council checkpoint in Tarmiya, a town about 25 miles north of Baghdad, killing five and wounding 15 others, an Interior Ministry official said.

Also on Monday, dozens of fighters identified as al Qaeda members attacked security checkpoints in Tarmiya -- north of Baquba -- that were manned by Iraqi police and members of local Awakening Councils, killing one council member, a Diyala military spokesman said.

The attacks come after the second-lowest monthly death toll of the Iraq war among U.S. military.

An official with Iraq's Interior Ministry said earlier 481 Iraqi civilians were killed in December -- the lowest reported monthly toll for the year.

While there's no way to confirm figures provided by the ministry, Iraqis say they've seen changes on the streets.

"Seven months ago, there were bodies scattered everywhere," Baghdad taxi driver Samir Hamoudi said. "But now, there is a big difference. The streets are empty of dead bodies."

On Monday, two suicide bombs -- including one strapped to a woman -- and a roadside bomb killed at least eight people and wounded 25 in cities north of Baghdad, according to Iraqi officials. E-mail to a friend

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

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