BAQUBA, Iraq, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces arrested four al-Qaida local leaders in the country's eastern Diyala province on Saturday, while a suicide bomber was captured in western Baghdad, police said.
Salim Mohammed Zaidan, a leader of al-Qaida militant group in Diyala province, and two of his aides were captured by Iraqi security forces in a village some 55 km north of the provincial capital city of Baquba, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
Zaidan was believed to be involved in ordering the killing of many Iraqis, while one of his aides was the person who carried out the beheadings of the victims, the source said.
In a separate incident, the Iraqi forces captured Abu Hamza, another local leader of al-Qaida militant group, in an abandoned house in a rural area outside the town of Buhruz, south of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, the source added.
Abu Hamza was captured with his explosive vest, the source said, adding the detainee confessed that he was preparing to carry out a suicide bomb attack against a polling center in the town of Buhruz during Sunday's parliamentary elections.
Diyala province, which stretches from the eastern edges of Baghdad to the Iranian border east of the country, has long been a stronghold for al-Qaida militants and other insurgent groups since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 despite repeated U.S. and Iraqi military operations against them.
In Baghdad, Qassim Atta, spokesman of Baghdad Operations Command, told reporters that his troops Saturday captured a suicide bomber with an explosive vest in Baghdad's western area of Abu Ghraib.
Atta confirmed that the Iraqi security forces are on the highest alert level on the eve of the country's crucial elections, as some 18.6 million Iraqis are to vote for the 325-seat Iraqi Council of Representatives, or the national legislature, out of some 6,300 candidates.
Last month, Abu Omer al-Baghdadi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq network threatened to attack the country's parliamentary elections to prevent the voting process "by all possible means, primarily, the military means."
Baghdadi, the leader of the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq ( ISI), also warned in his statement the Iraqi Sunni community of taking part in the elections that he described as "comedy and dangerous play" which plotted by the Shiite and their American allies.
Sporadic attacks are still common in Iraq as part of recent deterioration in security which shaped a setback to the efforts of the Iraqi government to restore normalcy at the days of the country's general elections.
