Special report: Tension escalates in Iraq     

    BAGHDAD, July 7 (Xinhua) -- An Awakening Council group leader in the town of Iskandriyah, south of Baghdad, was killed in a bomb explosion, a local police source said on Monday.

    Ali al-Badrani, head of the council group in the town was killed on Sunday afternoon after meeting with U.S. forces and local tribal leaders in the town, some 50 km south of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

    Badrani was announced dead after he sustained critical wounds by the bomb blast, which the source said was attached to his car.

    One of Badrani's bodyguards was also injured by the attack, the source said.

    Awakening Councils are armed groups of local neighborhoods, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgents who have turned their rifles toward the Qaida network after the latter adopted a hardline Islam and exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

    Earlier on Monday, two policemen were wounded when a car bomb parked near a police checkpoint in the town of Massayab, some 60 km south of Baghdad, the source added.