Special report: Tension escalates in Iraq

    BAGHDAD, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Gunmen shot dead an anti-Qaida fighter and his family in a village in Iraq's Diyala province, a provincial police source said on Saturday.

    "Salah al-Zeidi, his wife, and two sons were killed late on Friday when unknown gunmen stormed their house in the al-Wathba village, south of the provincial capital Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

    Two months ago, Zeidi has joined the Awakening Council group who fight al-Qaida militants in the village, the source said.

    The Awakening Council groups are armed groups, especially some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups, who fight the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

    In a separate incident, two Iraqi security members were seriously wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol near the al-Asriyah village, some 85 km north of Baquba, the source said.

    The attacks in Diyala came as the U.S. and Iraqi security forces are conducting a major offensive in the province to uproot al-Qaida militants from their strongholds in Iraq.